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Slammer Worm Slams Microsofts Own
MondoMor writes "Microsoft's forgot to patch some of its own servers to protect it from the months-old vulnerability exploited by the Slammer Worm, reports C|Net. Oops. Apparently Redmond's network was hit pretty hard. Just goes to show that no matter who you are, you'd better keep your apps patched." Update: 01/29 01:59 GMT by T : And if you're running systems which might be affected, take note: whitehorse writes "The Microsoft KB article for the Slammer patch found here has an incorrect URL for 'Download the patch' referring to KB Q316333 which is only a handle leak fix. The real patch may be found later in the article."
The article I read (on yahoo) states the unpatched servers were all on the internal network, not the internet, and that they were in use by researchers within microsoft.
Let's not jump too quickly on the bash microsoft bandwagon for that. (Of course, if they just did enough testing and didn't release buggy, vulnerable software in the first place...)
automatic update doesn't work with SQL server. you have to do patches the "old" way (unzipping files, renaming files, prayer), which is probably why so many novice admins never applied the patches.
The thing to remember is this worm infected any machine running the MSDE (A scaled down MS-SQL server) So if you were running Access or Office 2000 or MS Visual Studio 6, or even Visio 2000 you could be affected by this. Most end users don't even know that they would be vulnerable and the statement "This particular worm largely ignored home and personal computers, due to the product it infects" is false. It also seems to have had an effect on certain Cisco routers. Not fun but you can't just blame "Poor Admins" as the culprits for the virualance of the worm.
*narf!*
There isn't only no way to get SQL Server patches from Windows Update, but (as the parent mentioned), the steps required to update SQL Server and the Desktop Engine (MSDE) is a royal bitch and some.
For example, to apply any hotfixes or cumulative patches for SQL Server 2000, you must download the package, extract it, backup the SQL Server install directory and databases, manually copy over DLL files and other updated binaries, execute the SQL query files included in the patch (one at a time, in a certain order... MSDE users need to use the command line interface for it since there is no GUI provided), then pray that everything is okay and start SQL back up.