'Code Red' virus fails to wreak havoc after much hype

'Code Red' virus fails to wreak havoc after much hype

JAKARTA (JP): The much hyped computer virus, Code Red, failed
to wreak havoc on Internet systems in Indonesia and other
countries on Wednesday, the day it was scheduled to attack for
the second time this month.

PT Agranet Multicitra Siberkom (Agrakom), which operates the
popular Detikcom online news portal, said it had not detected any
unusual activities with its Internet system.

"If anything should happen, it should happen this morning, but
so far nothing out of the ordinary has occurred," Agrakom's
infrastructure coordinator Achmad Ulfi told The Jakarta Post.

However, he said that the company has always taken precautions
against the possibility of a computer virus attack by always
installing the latest anti-virus software on their system.

The virus, categorized as a worm by computer experts,
infiltrates a server and then fills the machine's memory with
meaningless computer codes. Just before the server crashes, the
worm is passed on to other vulnerable computers.

A virus generally ruins the system which it has infected,
while a worm doesn't. Instead, it disrupts the system's function,
such as by defacing websites and launching a data flood that
could overwhelm servers, computer expert Zatni Arbi told the
Post.

The Code Red virus -- named after the cherry flavored caffeine
soft drink popular with computer programmers -- only attacks
servers running on Microsoft's Internet server software such as
Windows NT and 2000, and the IIS Web server software.

Microsoft has issued a patch for administrators to protect
their servers. More than one million copies of the patch have
been downloaded, the AFP newswire reported.

Individual computers not running the server software are
immune to the worm, including the vast majority of individual
home and business users.

"Our server for Agrakom has already been protected with the
latest software patch from Microsoft," he said, quickly adding
that the company periodically updates its computer systems to
prevent virus threats.

Scheduled to attack the Internet at midnight Greenwich Mean
Time (GMT) on Tuesday, the Code Red virus has also failed to
disrupt Internet systems in the United States.

"Everything is looking normal," Dan Berkowitz, a spokesman for
Keynote Systems, was quoted as saying by the newswire. Keynote
Systems is an Internet performance monitoring company based in
San Mateo, California.

The first worm attack occurred on July 19, affecting more than
250,000 systems in just nine hours. The attack tried to overwhelm
the White House website with data requests, but U.S. government
programmers thwarted the virus by moving the White House web
pages to a new Internet address just in time.

Though the worm did not strike immediately on Wednesday
(Tuesday, U.S. time), Berkowitz said the new worm attack could
cause problems in the next few days, as it works its way around
the Internet.

"There could be a cumulative effect," he said. "It's best to
stay cautious."(tnt)