Code Red is dead for now, may be

washington: code red is dead. or at least, it's in deep coma. the much-talked about computer worm failed to slow down, let alone knock out the internet as had been widely feared. related stories general apprehension, fuelled by a public warning by the fbi appeared to be misplaced. in the end, code red was as much a dud as the y2k bug was dubbed a humbug.in any case, code red was never expected to strike at low level computers. the main danger it posed was to high-end servers used by businesses that have a particular microsoft server software. by infecting the servers the worm was expected to slow down access to big sites. but a spokesman for keynote systems, the leading san mateo-based monitor internet performance that is led by iit-ian umang gupta, said traffic on some of the most visited sites such as yahoo, google and excite appeared normal. still, experts said part of the reason why code red was rendered a dud was that the worldwide alert helped companies fortify their systems with the free patch supplied by microsoft. the company reported that more than a million patches had been downloaded from its site, most of them over the last two days. "it's something like the y2k bug because everyone was prepared," reuters quoted ravi venkatesam, vice president of operations at atesto technologies in california as saying. "because everyone protects themselves it turns out to be a dud. but that's a good thing because it means that everyone has protected themselves." the world - mostly the western world - spent nearly $300 billion arming itself against the y2k bug. in contrast, says research firm computer economics, fighting code red has already cost those infected $1.2 billion, including $ 450 million in loss of productivity. that compares favourably to neutralising the love bug virus, which cost nearly $8 billion because it infected a wide array of low-end computers used by home users. the hysteria over cyberattacks involving viruses and worms has turned the spotlight on several indian-led firms like mcafee, which was co-founded by srivats sampath and three other indians, and sonicwall, co-founded by brothers srikanth ravi and sudhakar ravi. mcafee's stock has risen nearly 300 per cent over the last six months despite the tech bloodbath while sonicwall has doubled from below $10 to over $20 in the same time. both firms are listed on nasdaq. both mcafee, which was spun off from network associates, and sonicwall follow the application service provider (asp) model. which means they sell software as a service over the internet to an established base of paying clients, rather than as off-the-shelf packages to customers. the upshot is they avoid the hassles with transportation, distribution, storage and longevity of the product and are able to provide an almost instant fix-it. although neither company is provided the fix-it for code red - microsoft, whose platforms are being attacked, is providing a free patch on its website - they are seeing plenty of green in the blues over cyber-security. "things are going to get a lot worse before they get better," warns sampath.