Worm slows Web traffic

A worm that infects Microsoft SQL 2000 database servers slowed the Internet on Saturday, and caused particular problems in South Korea, according to numerous news services including AP. Microsoft published a critical patch to fix the hole six months ago. Companies affected included Bank of America and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, according to the report. And as UPI pointed out, the attack was easily avoidable. Comment: It does seem strange that large corporations can fail to take simple precuations. It is hard to believe their IT departments couldn't find anybody with the skills needed to download and install the patch. Given corporate change control policies for critical systems, maybe six months just isn't long enough for them to get round to it.... or maybe they were all on holiday when the similar Code Red worm struck in July 2001. Because if they'd seen it all before, you might suppose they would have done something about it.