Code Red

The Code Red worm was first discovered and researched by eEye Digital Security employees Marc Maiffret and Ryan Permeh when it exploited a vulnerability discovered by Riley Hassell. They named it "Code Red" because Code Red Mountain Dew was what they were drinking at the time.

The original Code Red worm initiated a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the White House. That means all the computers infected with Code Red tried to contact the Web servers at the White House at the same time, overloading the machines.

A Windows 2000 machine infected by the Code Red II worm no longer obeys the owner. That's because the worm creates a backdoor into the computer's operating system, allowing a remote user to access and control the machine. In computing terms, this is a system-level compromise, and it's bad news for the computer's owner. The person behind the virus can access information from the victim's computer or even use the infected computer to commit crimes. That means the victim not only has to deal with an infected computer, but also may fall under suspicion for crimes he or she didn't commit.

Code Red infected between 1 and 2 million computers and resulted in an estimated $2.75 billion in clean-up costs and lost productivity. This is out of a possible 6 million, as that is the number of IIS servers in existence at the time. It was the most costly malware of 2001.

Microsoft's update servers were hit with the worm around the time it started spreading. The next month, Hotmail was infected. It is uncertain whether Hotmail was infected with the original or the more virulent CodeRed.II. No personal information was compromised.

CodeRed was deemed by the FBI to be so dangerous that it could bring down the entire Internet due to the increased traffic from the scans.