Enero 25, 2003

The night the Internet broke

Computer experts said the slowdown on Saturday was similar to the impact of the "Code Red" virus, which brought Internet traffic to a halt in the summer of 2001.’ -BBC

I am still trying to figure out the exact logistic of this. How does one shut down the Internet by running a worm? Why would someone go through the trouble of doing this? Why do I feel so cut of from the world? How come I don’t remember the “Code Red” virus of 2001?

Well this explains part of it:
The code instructs the server to go into an endless loop, continually sending out data to other computers, in effect performing a denial of service attack’

Why am I always suspicious when a company quickly comes up with a fix?’ The Microsoft website has a fix for the vulnerability...

More info can be found here.

[Story first spotted at Geekggrl’s]

Posted by munin at Enero 25, 2003 12:55 PM
Comments

I was reading about this over a week ago, and apparently it was something that was going to be much more lethal. Good thing it just slowed down the internet.

Posted by: hoopty on Enero 25, 2003 06:37 PM

Hoopty, this was the first I heard of it. Talk about being out of the loop :D
I wouldn't want to know what would have happened if it did something worse then just slow down the internet.

Posted by: munin on Enero 25, 2003 07:03 PM

Various news services claim it was an exploitation of a known security hole in SQL Server. Microsoft noted the hole about six months ago and provided a patch for it even then. This just goes to show that there are a lot of pokey people running the internet's backbone pipes.

Heartening, really.

Posted by: Naked Tiny on Enero 26, 2003 06:03 AM
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