- WASHINGTON (AFP) - The infamous
Code Red computer virus that snarled Web servers around the world probably
originated at a university in China, according to a congressional report
released Friday.
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- The Code Red virus "is believed to have started
at a university in Guangdong, China," according to Keith Rhodes, the
chief technologist for the General Accounting Office, the investigative
arm of Congress.
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- Rhodes' testimony was given to a hearing Wednesday and
released Friday by the GAO. He did not elaborate on the origin of the virus.
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- But he said the virus can do damage to the global Internet
infrastructure because it can "decrease the speed of the Internet
and cause sporadic but widespread outages among all types of systems."
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- He said that "the first version of Code Red created
a randomly generated list of Internet addresses to infect. However, the
algorithm used to generate the list was flawed, and infected systems ended
up reinfecting each other. The subsequent versions target victims a bit
differently, increasing the rate of infection."
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- The so-called Code Red virus is categorized as a "worm"
which invades servers and overwhelms their memory capacity, shutting them
down just before the worm is passed to another computer.
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- Servers are computers that pass data, such as Web pages
and e- mail, across the Internet. Individual computers are not vulnerable
to the attack.
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- Some versions of the Code Red virus targeted attacks
on the White House Internet server, although officials said no damage was
done to the site.
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