The SQL worm is still out there
Entries made on this weblog earlier today went into the void, rather than to the website.
Why? Because the SQL worm that crippled much of the Net yesterday is still out there, clogging things up. A traceroute can quickly pinpoint the areas of congestions, which are plentiful. Plus, on one of my ISP’s co-located servers, another user (not them) hadn’t patched their copy of SQL Server since the Pleistocene Era, thus adding to the fun.
Translation of above into English: The Net will continue to be slow and unpredictable today. Expect delays.
This was preventable. The most recent patches of SQL Server block the worm from working, and, obviously, thousands of sites had not yet installed it. Of course, pondering why Microsoft products have endless gaping security holes that must be patched constantly is another question indeed.
And the worm itself is preventing people from downloading the patch.
“But even as some Microsoft executives urged companies to download patches, others admitted that this was not as easy as it sounded. Microsoft spokesman Rick Miller was quoted in USA Today as confirming that Internet congestion was interfering with administrators trying to download the patch”.