Microsoft, US government and FBI have united in Code Red alert

July 30, 2001

Following the Code Red worm's targeted denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the White House internet servers over the last fortnight, the US Government has issued unprecedented warnings about the warm, calling it a distinct threat to the internet.

Representatives of President George Bush, the FBI and Microsoft are planning a news conference later today to bring attention to the Code Red.

Officials will highlight the possibility of the worm coming back to life in the next few days in a mutated and even more dangerous form.

On the first day of the outbreak, Code Red infected more than 250,000 systems.

Officials are strongly recommending businesses to install a security patch available on Microsoft's website.

The systems affected by the worm:


• Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with IIS 4.0 or IIS 5.0 enabled and Index Server 2.0 installed
• Windows 2000 with IIS 4.0 or IIS 5.0 enabled and Indexing services installed
  
• Cisco CallManager, Unity Server, uOne, ICS7750, Building Broadband Service Manager (these systems run IIS)
• Unpatched Cisco 600 series DSL routers