Subject: Re: Code-red worm (snicker snicker...)
To: None <hubert@feyrer.de>
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 08/02/2001 14:10:29
In message <200108021806.UAA15712@rfhpc8317.fh-regensburg.de>, Hubert Feyrer wr
ites:
>In article <20010802142555.34C357B4B@berkshire.research.att.com> you wrote:
>> No -- it could have happened to any OS.  It was a buffer overflow, 
>> and there are lots of those on Unix systems, too.  Should one be found 
>> in Apache, the Net might be worse off, because Apache has so much more 
>> market share than IIS does.  
>
>On Unix, just because you can overflow a buffer doesn't mean the CPU
>can run the code you feed it. 
>

Right.  But there aren't many types of machines out there, and even 
1988 worm handled multiple CPU types.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb