The Slammer worm, whose attack over the weekend represented the most serious online assault in 18 months, demonstrates the Internet is still highly vulnerable. The worm infected defenseless machines, reproduced itself, and sent out large volumes of data traffic that disrupted many systems, including Bank of America ATMs, high-tech manufacturing, mortgage and credit card companies' Web sites, and police dispatch operations. More than 200,000 North American computers and between 400,000 and 700,000 global computers were affected by the worm, according to the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Asian businesses received some of the worst disruption, and both American and South Korean authorities are seeking out the worm's inventor, a task complicated by the hacker's unknown location. Slammer exploited an established security hole in Microsoft's SQL Server database software, for which a patch had been issued several times last year; the havoc caused by the worm proved that the patch was not installed by many users. Ensuring Internet security and keeping abreast of security patches as well as vulnerabilities is an almost impossible challenge, says Computer Security Institute director Patrice Rapalus. "If individuals or organizations are determined to exploit whatever kinds of flaws there are in the millions of lines of code for different applications, you have no real defense," she explains. The SQL flaw was one of several recent security embarrassments for Microsoft, including other vulnerabilities that were exploited by the Code Red and Nimda worms in 2001." SiliconValley.com (01/28/03) Discuss this attack and what needs to be done to prevent further attacks of this nature