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Guardian lauds our skeptical Code-Red coverage

One good plug deserves another

Guardian Unlimited columnist Neil McIntosh shares our view that the Code Red worm will have little effect on the cyber-comings and goings of the average Netizen this month, despite dire warnings promulgated through much of the mainstream press.

Indeed, CNN was reporting hysterically yesterday that all users of Microsoft operating systems are in danger, which is ludicrously false; and we've heard that the venerable BBC picked that error up and ran for their lives with it. (The worm affects IIS, so unless you're running default installations of Win-NT server or Win-2K server, or IIS over W2K Pro, you can just forget about it.)

McIntosh isn't about to quiver in fear among the clueless wire drones. "I remain confident we can sleep soundly. Things might slow down a bit, some Web sites will be knocked out, but the on-line world will not end in the way some are saying it will," he writes sensibly.

"As the IT Web site The Register [awww...shucks *blush*] has reported in credible coverage of the worm, the Internet met Code Red for the first time in the middle of this month. The result? There was increased traffic on the Internet and on their networks, and if you'd been sharp you would have seen the Net slow down just a little. But the predicted Network Armageddon due Friday July 20 did not happen."

It seems he's been reading our friend Rob Rosenberger at Vmyths, too.

"Indeed, there was greater havoc created by fear of the worm than by the worm itself. The US Air Force's network administrators showed rather less bravery than their airborne colleagues when they whipped all their Internet servers off-line in a precautionary move, according to Vmyths, a long-standing virus myth-busting site."

We must say we admire his taste in Net security literature. ®

Related Stories

Washington mobilizes against Code Red resurgence
Code Red Tribulation is nigh, Steve Gibson warns
Internet survives Code Red
IIS worm made to packet Whitehouse.gov

Related Links

The relevant MS security bulletin
The Win-NT 4.0 patch
The Win-2K Pro and Advanced Server patch

Note: the worm is memory-resident. You must re-boot after installing the hotfix.

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