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South Korean Group Sues Microsoft Over Slammer

We should be sueing those dossy admins that dont patch their systems up!

"In a sign of users' increasing frustration with the security shortcomings of many software applications, a civic group in South Korea has made good on their threat to file a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp.'s Korean subsidiary, a Korean ISP and the country's Information Ministry. The suit is the direct result of the havoc caused by the SQL Slammer worm in January. The worm infected thousands of machines all over the world running Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 software, but it hit South Korea particularly hard. Some ISPs in the country were knocked off-line for extended periods of time thanks to huge amounts of network traffic generated by the worm. Damage in the U.S. was mostly limited to smaller network outages, but at least one bank's ATM machines were affected, as was the 911 system in one locality.

Slammer exploited a known flaw in the database software for which Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., had released a patch six months prior to the outbreak of the worm. But that apparently wasn't sufficient to satisfy the plaintiffs in the Korean lawsuit. The People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, suing on behalf of more than 1,500 Internet users, 70 Internet café owners and an online shopping site, says that Microsoft is at fault for allowing the vulnerability into the SQL Server software in the first place, according to a story in the Korean-language Chosun Ilbo newspaper. The group had been threatening to file the suit for several months."

View: Eweek Article

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