CODE RED “A REAL AND PRESENT THREAT TO THE INTERNET’

ENTROPY, the Dublin based Internet security company, has warned Irish companies to again be vigilant about the Code Red computer virus.
The FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Centre has issued an alert on the notorious Code Red computer virus.
The National Infrastructure Protection Centre stated they consider that: “The Code Red Worm and mutations of the worm pose a continued and serious threat to internet users.”
Commenting on the alert Conall Lavery, Managing Director, Entropy, said: “We feel that most Irish businesses listened to the original warning and took action to update their anti-virus software with the necessary patches.”
According to the alert issued by the National Infrastructure Protection Centre Code Red is likely to start spreading again on August 1 2001 at 1am and has mutated so that it may be even more dangerous.
The Code Red worm scans the Internet, identifies vulnerable and infects these systems by installing itself. Each newly installed worm joins all the others causing the rate of scanning to grow rapidly. This uncontrolled growth in scanning directly decreases the speed of the Internet and can cause sporadic but widespread outages among all types of systems.
Commenting on the warning Conall Lavery said: “Code Red, as with all other viruses, has the potential to cause damage, however if companies have taken the necessary precautions they should be fine.”
(GB)