The Daily Interview: What to Expect From the Code Red Worm

At 8 p.m. EDT this evening, a malicious worm is expected to awaken in computer systems around the world and wreak havoc on the Internet.

It sounds like something out of a bad science-fiction novel, but it's the truth. A malicious worm, a piece of computer code already embedded in hundreds of thousands of computers, is expected to launch an attack that was originally aimed at whitehouse.gov, the White House's Web site. The origin of the computer virus is unknown. (For more on the virus, read Jim Seymour's article.)

A worm is a virus that infects a computer via a network, like the Internet, and propagates itself by copying its own code and sending it out to other computers connected to that network. This particular worm, known as Code Red, is unique due to its lengthy incubation period -- it replicates itself through networks, undetected, from the first to the 19th of the month. ...