Code Red (2001): “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu” says whitehouse.gov

code red

Viruses, whether virtual or real, have impacted our lives. If the virus is well known, more likely it caused a lot of damage and grief to people around the world. Virtual viruses, like worms and trojans, have been known to corrupt or steal sensitive information from one’s computer. Here is one of the most well known computer viruses in the last century:

Code Red (2001)

Compared to modern malware, Code Red seems like an almost kinder, gentler version of a threat. But when it swept across computers worldwide in 2001, it caught security experts off guard by exploiting a flaw in Microsoft Internet Information Server. That allowed the worm to deface and take down some websites. Perhaps most memorably, Code Red successfully brought down the whitehouse.gov website and forced other government agencies to temporarily take down their own public websites as well. The original Code Red worm initiated a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the White House. That means all the computers infected with Code Red tried to contact the Web servers at the White House at the same time, overloading the machines. Though later worms have since overshadowed Code Red, it’s still remembered by anti-virus experts as a turning point for malware because of its rapid spread.

The Code Red and Code Red II worms popped up in the summer of 2001. Both worms exploited an operating system vulnerability that was found in machines running Windows 2000 and Windows NT. The vulnerability was a buffer overflow problem, which means when a machine running on these operating systems receives more information than its buffers can handle, it starts to overwrite adjacent memory.

Where else did it wreak havoc?

A Windows 2000 machine infected by the Code Red II worm no longer obeys the owner. That’s because the worm creates a backdoor into the computer’s operating system, allowing a remote user to access and control the machine. In computing terms, this is a system-level compromise.

Web servers running Windows NT might crash more often than normal.

Code Red caused the spark in the Anti-Virus Community to create more reliable and less vulnerable systems. This is yet another virus that has taken down some of the virtual “buildings” of America.

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