Code Red begins to take hold

The Code Red worm is beginning to take hold and has reportedly infected at least 80,000 websites worldwide.

The Sans Institute said about 80,000 websites are infected.

The worm is also spreading fears of a major internet slowdown.

US officials remain hopeful that enough computers are protected to avoid major interruptions.

The infection rate seems to be on par with the worm's first outbreak last month, said Alan Paller, research director at the Sans Institute, a computer security think tank working with the US government.

The FBI's National Infrastructure Research Centre reports the worm has been seen worldwide.

"Early reports of activity spanning the entire globe, including the US, indicate the worm has gone active and is presently spreading throughout the internet," according to a NIPC statement.

Code Red infected at least 300,000 websites during the first outbreak.

Early reports wondered whether those slowdowns were due to a Baltimore train crash that damaged some fibre-optic lines, but now officials blame the incident on Code Red. In July, the worm had only a day to spread before it was programmed to go into an attack mode against the White House website. But now the worm has much more time to do damage.

The worm can spread quickly without human intervention, but does not affect most home computers.

The malicious program can only be stopped if enough website operators install Microsoft's software patch, which plugs the security hole the worm uses to attack. FBI officials continued to urge computer users to download the patch.