The Week in Review: Lair of the SQL worm

NEWS The aftershocks of the SQL Slammer worm are still being felt. Among the more interesting stories to come out of the continuing examination of the two-week-old worm disaster was the case of David Litchfield, whose "proof of concept" code demonstrating a bug in Microsoft's SQL software seems to have actually been used in the worm's creation. Litchfield did some soul-searching after this came to light, but has decided publishing such code to the general public is still worth doing.
I can't help it if my code's read, says researcher Another facet of Slammer: it seems to fulfil many of the predictions about the inevitability of "Warhol" worms -- that is, ones that can infect the entire Internet in 15 minutes. Next stop, morphed versions with working random number generators.
Slammer: The first 'Warhol' worm? And in other Slammer news, Microsoft has released new security tools specifically aimed at dealing with ongoing Slammer infections, and a Korean group is preparing to sue over the widespread damage that the worm caused in that country.
Microsoft releases anti-Slammer tools
Korean group plans Slammer lawsuit Other bugs haven't stopped appearing while the world ruminates on Slammer. Five days and more than three million downloads after Opera released version 7.0 of its eponymous browser, it has fixed some nasty flaws that give Web sites total access to a user's PC. We also have the first review.
Phantoms of the Opera fixed The Beeb accidentally ploughed fans of The Archers radio drama with the a mass-mailing virus. On the other hand, for businesses the cyber-security picture doesn't look so bad at the moment. Unless you pay attention to software vulnerabilities, that is.
The Archers fans ploughed by email virus
Blended attacks on the increase
Report: Net attacks on businesses down Would you like to play a game? Nokia has released handsets aimed at gamers before, but the N-Gage handset is packed with features and has a slew of popular games ready to go. It looks cool, but early impressions suggest it is incredibly fiddly to actually play. And of course there's this other company called Nintendo to contend with.
Nokia aims to N-Gage gamers The European Commission had some interesting things to say about how copyright should be enforced in the EU this week. A draft proposal of an EU directive was finally published, and the entertainment industry didn't much like what it saw. The directive harmonises many IP-enforcement issues across the EU, but of course, Britain already has one of the most stringent regimes in Europe, so it won't be much affected. In other countries it will be a different matter, although the changes won't go as far as the labels and software companies would like.
EU copyright proposal comes under fire Speaking of intellectual property, a company has come up with what seems to be a legitimate claim on Internet technology -- one that could affect the entire streaming media industry.
Patent claim threatens streaming industry Will you still be reading this next week? The latest Oftel figures show the ratio of UK homes and SMEs with Internet access has levelled off over the last year, a big change from the booming growth of the past few years. Broadband is still growing, though.
UK's Internet access reaches plateau And finally, bad smells might not be one of the better-known hassles that small businesses have to put up with, but when it comes to complaints about tech support, body odour and bad dress sense both made it into the top 10.
SMEs reveal their tech support gripes

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