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American Morning

Code Red Computer Virus Alert Far From Over

Aired August 01, 2001 - 09:01   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: And we're going to start with another story that we were looking at a lot yesterday. So far so good with that worldwide alert against the "Code Red" computer worm. The Internet does appear to be functioning normally this morning but the alert is far from over.

The FBI and the computer industry are watching and they are doing so very closely. Security experts are warning it took seven days for the Code Red worm to hit its stride in the previous attack last month, so they're keeping their eyes open this morning. Internet site operators have been scrambling to install a patch that will avoid this worm.

DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: And with the latest on the status of Code Red right now we're going to turn to Daniel Sieberg of CNN.com. Dan, not too much evidence of it this morning, is there?

DAN SIEBERG, CNN.COM: Right. Good morning, Donna.

So far so good is really the way to look at this worm. It is actually out. It is trying to spread itself. However, the signs are encouraging right now that it's not going to to the damage that some people had predicted, that it may just actually turn and not do what everyone had thought would be the worst case scenario, which was to slow the Internet down.

There's a couple of reasons for that. The first reason is that there was a lot of lead time leading up to this worm being sent out. A lot of warnings went out. There was a lot of information for people to get the patch, to update their system. So a lot of preparation for this type of worm, which in the past with certain viruses there weren't.

It's also very early in the cycle of this worm. It's only been less than 24 hours. Last time it took almost a week for them to assess the damage. It's probably going to take that long again.

KELLEY: Anyway, because, you know, even though we don't see it yet, it could take a while for it to show up. And you think just about a week they're saying possibly, so people should still keep watching for it?

SIEBERG: People should still keep watching for it. The last time it went out it did do a fair bit of damage. A lot of computer experts are looking back now, seeing what it did a couple of weeks ago and, in fact, they're saying there was several hundreds of millions of dollars in damage done to upgrade systems and so on. So they still need to wait and see whether that's going to be the case with this latest outbreak.

However, as I said, very encouraging signs right now that there's not going to be this meltdown of the Internet. People who log on today are not going to notice any real significant difference in their Web surfing. So very encouraging signs at this point.

So far so good is definitely the way to look at it.

KELLEY: Yes, so just real quickly, Daniel, though, this is the second go around for this. How many more times could we see this, do we know?

SIEBERG: Well, we hope it doesn't come out ever again. It does have these couple different cycles where it starts the first of the month to try sending itself out to try and jam up the Internet. And if it doesn't get squashed, essentially, if these network and system administrators don't update their systems with this patch from Microsoft, then it could start its cycle again next month.

It could also do its denial of service attack about three quarters of the way through the month if it's not squashed, if it's not killed and stopped the way the people are hoping that it will be done. And a lot of that, the reason that it has had minimal impact right now, we can probably point to the information that was put out. Some people might say it was hype because it was built up too much.

KELLEY: Got ahead of the game.

SIEBERG: But, yes. It was more of a warning, you know? That's the way they always look at it.

KELLEY: OK, from CNN.com, Daniel Sieberg. Nice to see you again. Thanks.

SIEBERG: Thanks a lot.

KELLEY: And you can keep up with the unfolding events in the Code Red story any time. When you're away from the TV you can get all the latest details at our Web site. That's at CNN.com.

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