Slammer virus causes disruptions over weekend

Internet Business News, Jan 27, 2003

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A new virus called Slammer has reportedly caused disruptions to Internet service in the US, Asia and Europe on 25 January 2003.

Slammer uses the buffer overflow vulnerability in the Windows SQL server to send out a large number of packets in a denial-of-service attack. Approximately 150,000 to 200,000 servers were thought to have been infected worldwide, according to Network Associates.

A number of organisations have reported a large increase in Internet traffic which in some cases caused outages or slowdowns. According to a spokesperson for KT Freetel the Internet disruptions affected a weekend of Internet banking and shopping in the run up to the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.

Antivirus firms have advised all those that are vulnerable to Slammer to download Microsoft's recently released SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3 which contains a patch designed to stop buffer overflow viruses.

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