From Noam Eppel’s “Security Absurdity: The Complete, Unquestionable, And Total Failure of Information Security“:
In 2001, the infamous Code Red Worm was infecting a remarkable 2,000 new hosts each minute. Nick Weaver at UC Berkeley proposed the possibility of a “Flash Worm” which could spread across the Internet and infect all vulnerable servers in less than 15 minutes. A well engineered flash worm could spread worldwide in a matter of seconds.