How Slammer Slammed

from the anatomy-of-a-worm dept

For all the hype last week about how Wired was going to publish the details of the Slammer worm, most of the reports focused on the wrong thing. I still think it was a bit of a (successful!) publicity stunt by the folks at Wired to get some attention for the latest issue, drumming up some "controversy" over the fact they were publishing the details of the Slammer worm's code that has been available online for months. What that controversy left out, however, is that the actual article is a fascinating look at how the Slammer worm worked - written in a way that you don't need to be a complete geek to understand. There is a little fear-mongering in the article, pointing out that this sort of exploit is likely to occur again - but without giving any suggested way to deal with it.