Worms

A worm is a self-replicating program that does not need to attach to a host program/file. Unlike viruses, worms can execute themselves. Worms have the ability to spread over a network and can initiate massive and destructive attacks in a short period of time.

One typical example of a massive attack is the "SQL Sapphire Slammer (Sapphire)" that occurred on 25 January 2003. The Sapphire exploited an MS SQL Server or MSDE 2000 database engine vulnerability. The weakness lays in an underlying indexing service that Microsoft had released a patch in 2002. It doubled in size every 8.5 seconds, and infected more than 90 percent of vulnerable hosts within 10 minutes. It eventually infected at least 75,000 hosts and caused network outages that resulted in:

• Canceled airline flights

• Interference with elections

• Bank ATM failures

Tips for Prevention

The Common Best Practices