Code Blue kicks Code Red out of bed

Code Blue is making itself cosy in Australia, kicking its red emissary out of the loop and doing it's own thing in the world of worm propagation.

Code Blue is a more virulent strain of the Code Red virus, protecting itself from other versions of the worm and reinfecting servers previously infected by its Code Red predecessor, according to Glenn Miller, MD of security software specialist Janteknology.

-It's a lot trickier than reiterations we've seen previously. It kicks out Code Red and is doing its own thing," Miller told ZDNet Australia. -There's no reason to hit the panic button. None of this is skies falling in stuff...but it's building."

Activity levels of malicious incidents are increasing worldwide, with China -- Code Blue's first port of call - up to 300,000 incident threats today from yesterday's 270,000, according to Miller.

The incident rate in Australia, which ZDNet reported to be around 32,000 yesterday, has gone up marginally and incidents in the US have broken the million barrier, Miller claims.

Code Blue is much more malicious than its red counterpart. It doesn't die when a system is shut down, re-activating itself every time an infected computer is booted up. It also downloads extra files from the already infected servers and recreates them in the C-drive of the system it goes on to infect. These files include maliciously modified versions of genuine files found in Windows, Miller said.

Code Blue also goes on to issue a denial of service attack against the Web site of Network Security Focus (NSFocus) - a Chinese network security provider.

The fact that it reinfects servers previously blasted by Code Red is also an issue, as there are a lot of servers out there still infected due to organisations' negligence or apathy, according to Miller.

"Infected servers are going to get a kick in the backside this time," Miller said. -This is not an arm's length problem, it's an in-house problem. These servers are going to start melting down."

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Talkback 3 comments

    What a crap article. Do you ev ...Anonymous -- 11/09/01

    What a crap article. Do you even have a degree in journalism? This is just propaganderish bullshittery to the max. You quoted every other web source and then put in some dull commentary of your own. Nice work!

    Thanks for the nice commentary ...Anonymous -- 11/09/01

    Thanks for the nice commentary anonymous poster.

    I am always vaguely suspiscious of anyone who doesn't have the guts to reveal who they are.

    As for the article, I don't mind being able to find out information in one concise article. Journalism tends to focus on the rehashing of what anyone says anyway, so why expect any different about zdnet?

    What would be even better is s ...Anonymous -- 11/09/01

    What would be even better is some advice to help me find the patch or prevention that I need to stop my system getting infected.

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