Code Red `Carpet Bombing`

As the Code Red virus have been invading 40,000 servers of 13,000 public offices and business offices, it caused a `serious virus disturbance`, in which the networks had to be stopped.

Since a mutant of the virus, which spreads like a nuclear fission, is found to be capable of hacking, there is a warning for the national secrets or business information leakage.

Although such hazards of computer virus had been warned previously, many institutions did not pay attention to them, which aggravated the damages.

At the press conference on August 8, Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) announced that as of August 7, 13,000 institutions, including 6,020 private companies, suffered the virus.

The institutions with damaged servers are as follows; 6,020 private companies, including Hyundai Motors, Ssangyong, and Kumkang Shoe Co.; 5,934 public or private offices; 68 associations, including Korea Institute of Registered Architects, UNESCO in Korea, and Health Insurance Review Agency; 37 research institutes, including Korea Institute of Public Finance and National Strategy Institute.

Half of the 16 public offices were damaged, including Central administrative institutions (Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs, Cultural Properties Administration, Korean Intellectual Property Office etc) and Seoul City. If a public institution is contaminated with `Code Red Version 3`, national secrets or private personal information can be leaked by hackers who can remotely control the contaminated server.

Regarding such risk, MIC said, ``Most of the institutions finished recovering their servers. For security purpose, we cannot release the names and number of the public institutions.``

Since 1,375 servers of educational institutions, including Kyunggi University and Hongik University, were contaminated, most of 300 universities are believed to have suffered.

Professor Chung, Taemyung, Department of Computer Engineering of Sungkyunkwan University, said, ``Considering that the announcement of MIC included the damages of Code Red, first and second invasions and the third mutant is the most malignant, and the size of damages may be much larger than announced. Since many institutions, universities and companies did not have security experts and `security insensitivity` prevailed, the damages became more serious.``

MIC released a warning about Code Red virus on July 27, asking for countermeasures.

Nevertheless, there were few institutions that paid attention to the warning.

Thus, MIC released the warning one more time on August 7, when the damages genuinely emerged. Despite such warnings, the damages turned out to be serious.

Moon Kwon-Mo africa7@donga.com