Last month, some cretin Out There writes Yet Another Worm called Blaster that can infect whole networks at once. That is, it can infect whole networks of Windows computers whose administrators haven't upgraded their operating system to incorporate the latest security . . .
Last month, some cretin Out There writes Yet Another Worm called Blaster that can infect whole networks at once. That is, it can infect whole networks of Windows computers whose administrators haven't upgraded their operating system to incorporate the latest security patches from Microsoft. One of the side features of these infections was a planned denial of service attack that was supposed to be launched against Microsoft's WindowsUpdate servers Saturday, Aug. 16.

Like other worms, Blaster propagates via several Internet-based programs. To alert the user community, various authorities issued dire warnings about how to block the culprit and contain its damage. One of these warnings came from our federal Department of Homeland Security, which issued its alert at the end of July.

Several broadband network administrators took it upon themselves to cut off inbound access to the three ports recommended by the feds, specifically ports 135, 139, and 445. This broke several other legitimate applications (including Outlook/Exchange transactions that occur over the public Internet). Several people complained when they were told the only way to connect to their Exchange servers was to install a VPN, use Outlook Web Access, or upgrade to Exchange 2003 (which isn't yet available). Exchange actually uses a bunch of different ports besides 135, for those of you interested.

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