The SQL Slammer worm played a major role in a recently reported spike in security incidents during the first three months of 2003. The report, put out by security firm Internet Security Systems Inc., found a 37 percent jump in reported security incidents and confirmed attacks from the fourth quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2003. Pete Allor, manager of the company’s ISS X-Force Threat Intelligence Services, said that Slammer—which in late January preyed upon servers running Microsoft Corp.’s SQL Server 2000 database—was a “huge part” of the substantial increase in security reports. Allor said that in just the two-day period when Slammer had its biggest impact, his group observed over 2 million related security events. To put that into perspective, over the past three months, the group observed some 160 million security events. Those numbers could point to a few things, Allor said: more hacker activities focused on probing databases and not enough alacrity on the part of DBAs (database administrators) when it comes to installing patches. Full Story
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