Code Red II virus attacks HK government servers
( 2001-08-15 14:12 ) (7 )

The Code Red II computer worm has attacked some of the Hong Kong government's internal servers causing temporary suspension of access, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

"The first signs of infection appeared shortly after 6 pm (1000 GMT) on Monday and access to the Intranet was suspended soon afterwards," a spokeswoman with the Information Technology Services Department told reporters.

It is expected that access to the government Intranet will resume later on Wednesday, she said.

The Intranet system is for the distribution of information within government departments and bureaux. The government's public Web site is unaffected.

A spokesman at the government-sponsored Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) said it had received six reports of Code Red infection and three reports of Code Red II infection so far.

Two of these reports were received in July while the rest were received this month.

The spokesman declined to identify the organisations involved.

The Code Red II worm, which strikes servers using Microsoft Corp's Internet Information Server Web software on the Windows NT and 2000 operating systems, is a meaner version of the Code Red worm which hit more than 300,000 computers in July.

The worm, which slows down servers, is designed to spread by scanning the Internet for vulnerable servers and leaves a "backdoor" on infected machines, making them easier to hack into in the future.