Jason, I can't believe you wrote this - seriously, I can't. > > As of now we don't know who wrote the worm, but we do know that it looks > like a concept worm with no malicious payload. There is a good argument to > be made in favor of such worms. > What good can come of a widespread DoS of the Internet? What about the problems that come hacker getting a hold of the payload and making it more malicious before everyone can respond? Remember, most people won't know about this until Monday and won't be able to fix the problem until later that day, or perhaps later in the week. > > Before you get upset at your vendor, or anyone else's, consider the bigger > picture and recognize the increased security hardening the Internet just > received. > It shouldn't have needed it. Microsoft released a patch for the vulnerability some time ago (granted it wasn't easy to install, especially for MSDE installations) but the real problem is those system administrators who don't apply patches when there is no good reason not to, and the network and firewall administrators who, for some incomprehensible reason, leave open ports like this in their firewalls and routers. Maybe the time has come to draft legislation to prosecute not only the writers of such malware, but those who recklessly leave their systems vulnerable and defenseless and, through their negligence, help propagate malware. Lastly, Microsoft and all other vendors need to make their patches available for all configurations and easier to install (a quick check shows that SQL Server SP3 is still not available for MSDE). John Howie CISSP MCSE President, Security Toolkit LLC
