10 Years After SQL Slammer

Trailrunner7 writes "Ten years ago today, on Jan. 25, 2003, a new worm took the Internet by storm, infecting thousands of servers running Microsoft's SQL Server software every minute. The worm, which became known as SQL Slammer, eventually became the fastest-spreading worm ever and helped change the way Microsoft approached security and reshaped the way many researchers handled advisories and exploit code. This is the inside story of SQL Slammer, told by David Litchfield, the researcher who found the bug and wrote the exploit code that was later taken by Slammer's authors and used as part of the worm."

Comments

Security priorities have changed

[Cid Highwind]

So this guy "wrote the exploit code that was later taken by Slammer's authors and used as part of the worm", and he's not dead or serving an eleventy hojillion year federal prison sentence?

Times change indeed...

Re:Also decided in favor of restrictive firewalls

[khasim]

I'd love to implement great security for every customer we have but it's always up to them and how much "trouble" they want to get through using their network (even if it isn't really).

That's the real problem. It will always be easier to NOT do something than it will be to do something.

And NOT doing something will, 99%+ of the time, will be less expensive than doing something.

It is only when that less-than-1%-of-the-time event hits that "something" gets done. And even then the 'something" is usually a panic reaction and NOT real security.