Virus overwhelms Global Internet Systems
Yahoo | at | by Mike
Traffic on the Internet slowed dramatically for hours early Saturday, the effects of a fast-spreading, virus-like infection that overwhelmed the world's digital pipelines and broadly interfered with Web browsing and delivery of e-mail. Sites monitoring the health of the Internet reported significant slowdowns globally, although recovery efforts appeared to be succeeding.
Most home users did not need to take any protective measures. Experts said the attack bore remarkable similarities to the "Code Red" virus that struck the Internet during the summer of 2001.
The virus-like attack, which began about 12:30 a.m. EST, sought out vulnerable computers on the Internet to infect using a known flaw in popular database software from Microsoft Corp., called "SQL Server 2000." But the attacking software was scanning for victim computers so randomly and so aggressively - sending out thousands of probes a second - that it saturated many Internet data pipelines.
The attack sought to exploit a software flaw discovered by researchers in July 2002 that permits hackers to seize control of corporate database servers. Microsoft deemed the flaw to be "critical" and offered a free repairing patch, but it was impossible to know how many computer administrators applied the fix.