Code Red worm poised for second attack on Internet

A malign program is poised to attack computers at midnight tomorrow, according to a joint warning from the FBI and computer security watchdogs.

In nine hours on July 19th, Code Red infected 300,000 computers and attacked US government websites and is set to re-appear in a possibly more powerful form tomorrow.

The Code Red programme is known as a worm because it can spread across networks and infect machines unaided.

According to warnings from the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Centre, the Code Red worm presents a "real and serious threat to the Internet".

The worm attacks computer servers using Microsoft’s Internet Information Services software versions 4.0 and 5.0. Code Red scans the Internet, identifies vulnerable systems and installs itself.

This uncontrolled scanning decreases the speed of the Internet. Webpages on infected machines are defaced with the text "Hacked by the Chinese" for a number of hours before deleting the text and lying dormant.

Code on infected machines appears to prepare the system to launch an attack against www.whitehouse.gov.The Whitehouse and Pentagon cut off public access to their sites to close the loophole exploited by the worm.

To rid machines of the worm, users are advised to reboot their computer. Software protecting against infection is available for download from www.microsoft.com.

Two variants of the Code Red worm have been found.