Jan 26, 2003
This weekend, a worm (the digital kind, not the organic kind) has been slowing access to large parts of the internet. BlibbleBlobble.co.uk was unavailable on saturday morning (GMT), and I understand that many people are still having trouble emailing me.
So if you're trying to email me, save up the emails, and try again on Monday afternoon when the lame-ass MS Server admins have gone back to work and fixed their systems!
Some ATM machines are failing in the US, and I believe that hotmail accounts are out of action, as is general internet access for people in south/ central US. The worm is taking advantage of security flaws in Microsoft servers (surprise, surprise), and has the effect that anyone in the same network as an SQL server will be flooded with traffic. See the full story for more details
If you have a Microsoft Windows XP system, do not change any hardware -- the XP activation servers are down (again!) and your WindowsXP computer will cease to function if you change any hardware. New WinXP computers should still operate, so long as the activation servers are brought online before your 30-day trial period finishes. As usual, anyone needing their computer for critical functions is advised to upgrade to FreeBSD
Home users should be reasonably unaffected by now: most of the large networks have limited the effects of the traffic, but anyone running SQL server on the internet will likely be unable to access it.
If you have SQL server running at home, you need to ensure that port 1434 is blocked at your firewall. If you don't have a firewall, unplug the ethernet cable and don't plug it back in until you've got a firewall.
Again, my apologies for the unavailability of this site: try again on Monday if you can't email me, or use the feedback links on this site.
