Code Red Back For More
Brian Stretch writes: "The Code Red II worm was unleashed early this morning and appears to be very different than the original and far more dangerous. CR2 infected servers only attack servers within their Class A address block and their Class B address block in particular: since 9:11am EST I've logged 148 CR2 attack attempts, 89 of which are from within my Class B subnet, suggesting that only servers within Class A networks that were deliberately seeded are being attacked. The 24.x.x.x range is one of the hardest hit, and as before, it's folks with cable modems and DSL connections that are providing the most victims." Several @home customers have written about slowed service today, but they're definitely not alone.
Unlike a car that explodes to a design flaw, software that explodes due to a design flaw seems to be immune to the civil justice system.
I haven't done any analysis of the worm myself, but has anyone questioned the possibility that this new version is phase two of the original worm? Not the same code per say, but perhaps the old code red does something to tell the new code red to "come here" or something?
The fact the old code red is turned off tells me that they might be linked to the same person/organization or something.. if I were some independant cracker I wouldn't bother getting rid of the old one since that's another thing which might break when I launch the new worm.
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Solution, never ever have your box plugged into the network while installing a Windows server. Only plug it in after all patches, service packs, and hot fixes have been applied first.