MacRumors.com, its provider, and a large portion of the internet was affected by what appears to be a worm that has affected exposed Windows 2000 SQL Servers. Early details available in this CNet news article:
- The worm infects computer servers that run on Microsoft Windows 2000 SQL software. Once it attaches to a server it transmits multiple data requests in a random manner to other addresses on the Internet looking for more vulnerable servers to infect.
The effect is a flood of traffic that bogs down ISP networks and can even knock Web sites off-line, Hypponen said. He added the worm was probably installed on a faulty server by a virus writer or hacker within the past few days.
While MacRumors.com is hosted on a Linux-based machine, many providers and systems were affected by this effective denial of service attack.
A patch for this vulnerability was has apparently been available since July 2002.
