Did FBI Ignore Code Red Warning?
The Code Red threat seems to have finally halted its malicious crawl, but the security company that discovered the vulnerability that Code Red exploits says the swift-moving Internet worm might have been immobilized much sooner if not for federal agencies’ caution about publicizing security threats. The worm hit more than 700,000 computers in July and August 2001, depositing a Trojan horse program on infected machines, which then simultaneously attacked a specific Internet Protocol address (initially, the White House Web site). The volume of messages slowed Internet traffic in general. Now, details about an earlier Code Red-like worm that hit systems back in February 2001 are raising questions about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s handling of computer virus outbreaks. PCWorld.com has confirmed that a worm similar to Code Red appeared in February, March, and May 2001 on systems belonging to Sandia National Laboratories, a U.S. Department of Energy security research lab based in Li
