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So there’s been lots of news about it now…and there was no second attack on Monday as was feared. However in most of the reports and comments I’ve read many are ready to put blame on IT admins who were too lazy to update the patch and that they had months to do so. I agree that the blame is shared - obviously the ones who released the worm are the most at fault, as well as those who have holes in their systems and partially Microsoft for releasing flawed software. But hardly anyone has referred to the communication issues between an American company and it’s non-native English speaking clients.

I did a bit of a tour around the Microsoft Japan and Korea sites and (believe that I) found the following references to the patch necessary to block the security hole.

On the Japanese site:
登録日 : 2002/10/17
更新日 : 2003/1/27

Information was released in October last year, and it was revised on the 27th of January.

On the Korean site (yes you can work things out even if you don’t know Korean - luckily dates and “SQL” appears in English) I couldn’t find anything before November 2002 relating to it.  Instructions in English about the download appeared on January 17, 2003.

I can’t confirm that this information is completely correct as it was tricky to search (and I have no contacts to ask). One point though is on both these sites the links to important security information is often only in English. Microsoft is a huge “international” company - there’s little excuse for inadequate communication. While obviously it would be an advantage for an IT person in an Asian country to be fluent in English - does it really need to be a pre-requesite?