Code Red: an overflow of $2 billion

On July 18, 2002 the code red II worn was unleashed on the internet and analysts estimate that more than 359,000 machines were infected within fourteen hours. The worm continued to spread and caused more than an estimated $2 billion in damage worldwide. The   code red virus wan not written to case major damage to the host; rather, it devoured network bandwidth by searching out other vulnerable hosts on the network to infect. The worm exploits a buffer-overflow vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS), which allows a remote user to execute arbitrary instructions remotely on an unpatched web server.