Economics

Patches Don't Make a Security Blanket

Merely plugging holes to foil a virus or worm attack is an increasingly inadequate solution. What can a harried systems administrator do?
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By Alex Salkever

The alarm bells are still sounding for Code Red. The worm software, which burrows into Web servers and replaces legitimate site content with the message "hacked by Chinese!!!", didn't match the fears of mass Internet destruction. No national crisis ensued. But the worm has infected hundreds of thousands of machines worldwide and will remain a threat for some time to come. Now there's talk of another Code Red virus ready to attack.