Slammer fails to make January AV charts
AV software isn't cure for prolific worm
Posted in Malware, 3rd February 2003 09:42 GMT
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The Slammer worm fails to make it into the monthly charts of AV firms this month - despite becoming arguably the most damaging Internet worm ever.
The Avril worm topped the list of calls to antivirus firm Sophos, while email filtering firm MessageLabs again reports that Klez-H topped its nuisance list. The company blocked Klez-H more than 550,000 times over the last four weeks.
The non-appearance of Slammer of either chart is easily explained: AV software and services has a limited role in blocking Slammer. Slammer, a memory resident virus, needs to be combated with a combination of filtering the malicious traffic the worm generates and patching vulnerable boxes running vulnerable versions of SQL Server and MSDE.
AV software doesn't have much of a role here, despite the numerous alerts by firms in the sector over the last week... ®
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