Warning for MS SQL Admins........

MS gets hit again with Virii on its servers. Also another good reason to use a long and complex password...........

From here:
http://www.theregus.com/content/55/25019.html

In part:

SQL server worm throttles bandwidth
By John Leyden
Posted: 05/22/2002 at 08:53 EST

Database admins are warned to bolt up the security of their Microsoft SQL Servers after the discovery of a worm which infects machines with default passwords.

The Spida worm attempts to locate and login to Microsoft SQL Servers with the default SQL administrator account, "SA", and a blank password. SQL Server ships with this by default and if you've haven't got around to securing it properly, now would be a good time to do so.

When a vulnerable computer is found, the worm infects it, sends its configuration and password information to an external host, and begins scanning for fresh targets.

Although the Spida worm is not destructive to the infected host (aside from attempting to mail out its configuration), it may generate a damaging level of network traffic when it scans for additional targets. Spida comes with a multi-threaded scanner that searches both internal and external IP addresses for vulnerable servers.

Thanks..... I always hate these kinds of bugs because I use MySQL servers alot. I'm really good with them..

Yeah... I have a honeypot on my machines... it's amazing how much traffic it's gotten just over the last couple of days.

It's kind of funny to think that now, pretty much until M$ pulls their heads out of their collective arses, we're always going to have a "certain percentage of Internet traffic" being used by worms (and for a long time after the bugs are squashed, just because of either reluctant or know-nothing admins out there).