Code Red expected to affect Internet gradually
WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO)
By Elinor Mills Abreu
SAN FRANCISCO, July 31 (Reuters) - Security experts on
Tuesday saw no immediate effect on the Internet from the
dreaded "Code Red" worm that was expected to have begun winding
its way through Web servers in a renewed attack.
But experts also cautioned that more time was needed to
assess the impact of the worm's forecast outbreak, which had
been expected to start as global clocks ticked over to midnight.
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ECONOMIC IMPACT
Computer security vendor Network Associates Inc. <NETA.O>
on Tuesday reported that it had scanned more than 20,000
systems and detected more than 1,230 servers that remained
vulnerable to Code Red shortly before thekey deadline for a
renewed outbreak.
Even as network security experts tracked the progress of
the bug, one research organization attempted an initial tally
of its economic costs.
Computer Economics, based in Carlsbad, California,
estimated that Code Red has already cost an estimated $1.2
billion in damage to networks, ranking it below last year's
Love Bug virus ($8.7 billion) but above the Melissa virus of
1999 ($1 billion) in terms of destructiveness.
The cost of clean-up, monitoring and checking systems for
the Code Red, which has infected about 360,000 servers, was
near $740 million, said Michael Erbschloe, vice president of
research at Computer Economics.
The loss of productivity associated with the worm was near
$450 million, he said.
"Information technology people are not cheap," he said. "A
lot of companies have outsourced this and they have to pay
sometimes $300 an hour to have people come in and look at their
servers." |
