Malaysia relatively unscathed by SQL Slammer
28th January 2003 (The Star)
By RASLAN SHARIF

PETALING JAYA: Quick action and preventive measures by local Internet service providers (ISPs) and corporate computer users limited the impact of the Slammer SQL computer virus, which caused a huge traffic jam on the Internet on Saturday.

News of the virus' crippling effects on the Internet had quickly spread over the weekend, and some observers expressed their fears that worse was awaiting as people went back to work today.

Slammer SQL works by infecting computers running Microsoft Corp's SQL Server 2000 and Microsoft Desktop Engine 2000 software, which is used by many companies around the world. The virus causes the infected computers to distribute copies of itself to thousands of randomly generated Internet addresses.

The impact of the virus reached its peak on Saturday, when the virus flooded the Internet and brought websurfing and e-mail to a near standstill.

Local Internet users experienced crawling speeds on Saturday and to a lesser extent on Sunday, but a speedy response to the attack by local ISPs, and others worldwide, meant that normal service resumed today.

"ISPs with several infected computer systems experienced very high bandwidth utilisation on Saturday and Sunday, but many applied the relevant filters and disconnected the infected servers today," said Raja Azrina Raja Othman, deputy director 1 of the National ICT Security and Emergency Response Centre (Niser).

She added that their action "improved their network performance dramatically."

"The response of owners of infected systems also significantly reduced incoming and outgoing traffic," she said.

Microsoft Malaysia said the virus had a minimal impact in Malaysia, and attributed this to the diligence of local users in updating their computers with the latest security fixes -- or patches -- provided by the company.

"We found the impact minimal and containable," said Microsoft services director Jason Lim. "Most of our customers have installed the patches or have reliable firewalls to safeguard their systems."

He added that there was no scramble by local companies to download the patches.

"There were very few requests for patches, and in most situations, these were done as a preventive rather than a corrective measure," he said.

Antivirus software company Trend Micro Malaysia said it had received no reports of infection by the virus in Malaysia as of Monday morning, although it did not completely rule out any local cases in the coming days.

The company said that the United States and South Korea were the two countries hardest hit by the virus so far, and that quick action by companies with infected computers there helped in reining it in.