Harman Patil (Editor)

Code Red (computer worm)

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Common name
  
Code Red

Type
  
Server Jamming Worm

Technical name
  
CRv and CRvII

Isolation
  
July 15, 2001

Code Red was a computer worm observed on the Internet on July 15, 2001. It attacked computers running Microsoft's IIS web server.

Contents

The Code Red worm was first discovered and researched by eEye Digital Security employees Marc Maiffret and Ryan Permeh, the Code Red worm exploited a vulnerability discovered by Riley Hassell. They named it "Code Red" because Code Red Mountain Dew was what they were drinking at the time.

Although the worm had been released on July 13, the largest group of infected computers was seen on July 19, 2001. On this day, the number of infected hosts reached 359,000.

Exploited vulnerability

The worm showed a vulnerability in the growing software distributed with IIS, described in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-033, for which a patch had been available a month earlier.

The worm spread itself using a common type of vulnerability known as a buffer overflow. It did this by using a long string of the repeated letter 'N' to overflow a buffer, allowing the worm to execute arbitrary code and infect the machine with the worm. Kenneth D. Eichman was the first to discover how to block it, and was invited to the White House for his discovery.

Worm payload

The payload of the worm included:

  • defacing the affected web site to display:
  • HELLO! Welcome to http://www.worm.com! Hacked By Chinese!
  • Other activities based on day of the month:
  • Days 1-19: Trying to spread itself by looking for more IIS servers on the Internet.
  • Days 20–27: Launch denial of service attacks on several fixed IP addresses. The IP address of the White House web server was among those.
  • Days 28-end of month: Sleeps, no active attacks.
  • When scanning for vulnerable machines, the worm did not test to see if the server running on a remote machine was running a vulnerable version of IIS, or even to see if it was running IIS at all. Apache access logs from this time frequently had entries such as these:

    GET /default.ida?NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00%u531b%u53ff%u0078%u0000%u00=a HTTP/1.0

    The worm's payload is the string following the last 'N'. Due to a buffer overflow, a vulnerable host interprets this string as computer instructions, propagating the worm.

    Similar worms

    On August 4, 2001, Code Red II appeared. Code Red II is a variant of the original Code Red worm. Although it uses the same injection vector it has a completely different payload. It pseudo-randomly chose targets on the same or different subnets as the infected machines according to a fixed probability distribution, favoring targets on its own subnet more often than not. Additionally, it used the pattern of repeating 'X' characters instead of 'N' characters to overflow the buffer.

    eEye believed that the worm originated in Makati City, Philippines, the same origin as the VBS/Loveletter (aka "ILOVEYOU") worm.

    References

    Code Red (computer worm) Wikipedia


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