Slashdot Mirror
New Microsoft SQL Server Worm
Ian Bell writes: "A new unnamed worm has been released and, once again, Microsoft software is the target. More specifically, this new worm targets Microsoft SQL servers with no administrator passwords set. Once the server is infected, it logs onto Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers and is ready to receive commands and act accordingly. Although this can be a fairly malicious worm, it is very unlikely to infect many servers due to the fact that majority of Microsoft SQL servers have administrator passwords."
by THE_MESSENGER, Troll Staff Writer
HELSINKI - It has just been learned that any Linux box with an unset "root" password in vulnerable to remote compromise, says Dick Johnson, Linux hacker and security analyst. "The attack is very simple," John reports. "Pretty much all you have to do is log in. Then you have complete control of the system." This security problem is believed to be caused by a fundamental flaw in the design of the UNIX family of operating systems, which is the model for the Linux kernel, a popular Cheap Software product. Johnson elaborates: "Those UNIX guys just didn't account for administrators who are too stupid to set root passwords."
However, knowledge of this flaw fairly widespread within the Linux community. In fact, the only person known to be unaware of a password-less root account's grave implications is Timothy Gaybone, an "editor" for the popular Cheap Software news website "Slashdot.org." While Timothy is a hardcore Windows 98 user, the recent posting of an article detailing a similar security problem relating to Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 relational database product leads many analysts to believe that he is unaware of Linux's problem as well. DOJ crytoanalyst Harry Blotter guesses that Timothy's "reliance on Windows 98 is probably the root cause of his ignorance. After all, Windows 98 doesn't require login passwords."
There are no reports of websites compromised by this latest Linux vulnerability, although many industry experts suspect that, oddly enough, Slashdot.org may have been breached years ago. "Rob Malda's personal workstation has probably been cracked -- his spell-checkers have been deleted," Dick Johnson explains.