Worm exposes laziness
C|Net | at | by Mike
The Sapphire worm that hit servers running Microsoft SQL this weekend was a wake-up call for anyone who thought the Internet had become a safer place following increased attention by corporate and government leaders. The small but malicious program rapidly exploited a six-month-old flaw in Microsoft SQL servers, underscoring a dirty secret in the IT industry: software bugs are common and administrators are slow to fix even widely publicized problems, said Johannes Ullrich, director of the security information site Incidents.org. "Companies should have been ready for (the worm)," he said. "That patch should have been applied--it's six months old now."