• Contact
• About
• Archives
• Home

And today it is sooooo slow. Of course when I first found myself unable to connect I naturally assumed it was just me (infamous for forgetting to pay bills). However I’d paid my bills so the blame shifted to my ISP. But then I talked to lil on te phone - and she said that she couldn’t get her mail or see many sites online. Hmmm the plot thickens. I turned on the TV - nothing on CNN, which is so focused now on Iraq that other major news tends to be neglected (for example - a tube train derailed and hit a wall at Chancery Lane station in the UK and it took them hours to report on it). I resorted to tuning in to the Japanese 24 hour news service which was shouting things about South Korea’s internet completely going down - even banks went offline. In Japan they said a stack of odd data had been floating around and the net had slowed - but for everyone I know it stopped. The news service said “cyber-terrorism” in every second breath and I became a tad concerned - but I think that’s the point of sensationalist news.

I called Tod who I assumed would be up at 1:30 am - he was but thought that our ISP only had gone down - he doesn’t have a TV though so I told him what I’d heard. He laughed and commented that at least now maybe Japan will be more careful about cyber-security. I agreed with him - in many ways (security, web design and understanding how to make sites appealing) Japan is still way behind the times.

Not being able to get any more info I went to bed.

The Boy wakes me up with a cup of coffee and I dash out to my computer - are we still disconnected? I can connect and finally get yesterdays mail. I go to Mainichi news - which I’ve already lost faith in - they mention nothing about it - guess if no-one is murdered or it doesn’t involve a teacher preying on their students, then they are not interested in the story.

I roll my eyes and go to CNN Asia. Nuttin. Good old BBC has a decent report on it. lil mails me a link to a news article on CNN - which comes up with a 404 error. I go to the index page and find a little link under “technology” about it. A couple of countries have their internet systems go down - but it doesn’t even make the headlines for them - obviously the development on Britney Spear’s stalker is a lot more important and newsworthy.

Maybe most of the internet in Asia stopping or slowing is just not interesting. Cause it’s just Asia right? A political analyst commented on CNN last night that maaaybe North Korea was going on about nuclear weapons just to get attention. In a bit of a warped way I can understand this. It usually only takes a major disaster to get Asia in the International news. Of course Bush could accidently fart and it would immediately be the breaking news headline on most news sites…

So where was I - looking at the BBC article because the CNN link lil sent me refuses to appear…it was a worm that attacked the system - W32.SQLExp.Worm (according to a message from her host uplinkearth) which “that targets Microsoft SQL 2000 servers. This virus exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft SQL 2000 servers with the intention of flooding networks with bogus network traffic to slow network performance. Data housed on Microsoft SQL 2000 Servers was not affected.”

BBC reports:“It is highly likely hackers have launched an all-out attack on the country’s internet system.
South Korean Information Ministry official”

“At least five of the internet’s 13 major hubs were targeted in Saturday’s attack.
The Microsoft website has a fix for the vulnerability, which companies can download. “

Let’s take a gander at these two quotes shall we? Highly likely that hackers did it. Oh honestly this word is a bit passe now isn’t it? I thought the internet community had moved on from this word - how about using the phrase “malicious criminals” instead?

Now the second phrase leads to the question who is to blame for the security being so slack that it could be attacked by this? Microsoft who shipped the software without ensuring it was secure? Sure they have a patch for it which can be downloaded from the site - but I feel that this is a bit of the ol’ “shutting the gate after the horse has bolted” situation. Instead of racing to get software out perhaps it would be better for everyone to just be patient until it has been fully debugged and checked? Or I’m I just being naive?
Or are the companies which didn’t download and install the patches at fault? I wish I could read Korean to find out whether 1. they have a Korean version of the Microsoft site and 2. whether this patch was clearly promoted. I could check the Japanese site - but at the moment I can’t seem to connect to anything outside of my own site - and even then it’s dodgy…to see just how much support in native languages the big MS offers.

Oddly enough I was only chatting about security issues with a programmer dude I met yesterday. He showed me a vulnerability attack to retrieve information from database sites. He said that most sites are protected from it - except for the ones that his about-to-be-former company built. He was surprised to see how lapse security was for these e-commerce sites, built by a company claiming to build secure sites. Tad scary ne? When you purchase online you are placing a lot of trust in a company - you assume that things should be secure…

On a final note I was shocked at myself when I found myself unable to connect. I didn’t realize how net-dependant I’d become! Most of my communication is by e-mail and almost all of my work now connected to it - it felt like I was being gagged and bound!

• The CNN story should load at http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/01/25/internet.attack/index.html - you’re right about no mention of Japan anywhere! Japan Today’s story at http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&id=247163 is the only article I’ve found so far that brings Japan into the picture.

  lil
  03/01/25 05:52 PM

• Glad I missed the outage. I was sleeping or something, I suppose.

  kuri
  03/01/25 08:54 PM

• Navi, connect me to the wired. 

  Serial Experiments:Lain watch it if you haven’t.

  Either way, I had no idea until today. Don’t really watch news media in the first place.

  Lasbrook
  03/01/25 10:33 PM