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American Morning

Who Should Worry About Code Red Computer Virus?

Aired July 31, 2001 - 10:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Now for a closer look at the "Code Red" worm, we're joined by Declan McCullagh. He is the Washington bureau chief for Wired.com. We appreciate your time this morning. How are you?

DECLAN MCCULLAGH, WIRED.COM: Hi, there. Pretty good, thank you.

HARRIS: All right, let me ask you about this red worm. We've been looking at different elements of this and we saw the map earlier this morning of how it spreads around the world. Who's most concerned right now, is it governments or business right now?

MCCULLAGH: A little of both. I wrote an article for Wired.com, I think it was last week, that talked about how the U.S. Commerce Department was having some problems with the Code Red worm itself. It had, it took some of its sites off line because they were worried about attacks by the Code Red worm. The Defense Department a week ago took a lot of its sites off line. This is a problem that worries government. They don't want their computers that are running the Web sites for dot-mil and dot-gov agencies to be carriers or infectious agents for this worm.

HARRIS: All right, now, we're not trying to be out here screaming, you know, the sky is falling and all that, but how bad could this really get?

MCCULLAGH: Well, this worm is actually not that bad. You can get rid of it by rebooting. What could be easier?

HARRIS: Yes.

MCCULLAGH: There is, but like your report said, if someone wanted to do something harmful, it would be very easy. The worm, instead of just propagating itself and sending along its message "hacked by Chinese" could do something really damaging. It could delete files. It could erase Web servers or it could send your company's confidential information out on the Internet.

HARRIS: Well, let me ask you this, considering the possibility here that we may all dodge the bullet this time around, enough companies may get the message in time -- and governments as well -- and go out and reboot and remove it from their sites or from their computers. But if it remains somewhere in any computer in the world, will it come back again? We're seeing now it's reemerging this time around.

MCCULLAGH: Right. The worm is dormant for the last 10 days of the month or so and then when the first day of the month comes around it uses Greenwich Mean Time. And so as of 8:00 Eastern, it's going to start its 20 day propagation process again. So what's going to happen until everyone running these Microsoft Web servers gets the upgraded, which was released by Microsoft a month and a half ago and actually just clicks on that and installs it and fixes the problem, yes, this is going to come up at the first of every month. It's the silliest thing.

HARRIS: Well, is there any way to find out who did this, who started the whole thing?

MCCULLAGH: No, it's a small worm. It doesn't, it has not left much of a fingerprint. There's, it only infects Web servers or it only defaces Web servers that are in the English language. And so that and the message makes folks think that its origins are in China. It also attacks the White House dot-gov site. Maybe this is a political protest. We don't know. But all indications point to its origin in China, but we don't have a clear answer on that one.

HARRIS: Well, such is the state of the information age.

Declan McCullagh, we thank you much for your expertise this morning and good luck down the road.

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