Research Paper on:
Slammer Sapphire Virus of January 2003

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
corporate apathy, to create some of the most damaging programs to date. The latest virus, launched over the weekend of January 25th and 26th of 2003, managed to inflict limited  damage, but those targeted were some of the largest server systems around. The Slammer/sapphire virus was efficient only in that it targeted a limited amount of computers, but those computers  infected were large server groups, namely corporate, which wrecked widespread devastation in the cyber-world. Reports estimate that over one hundred thousand computers were compromised during the 2003 attack in  January. The sad thing is, this infection was totally preventable(Lemos 2003). What happened was that for at least six months experts had made available a patch which would correct the  flaw in the Microsoft SQL server, but system administrators were slow to download and install the patch. As a result their procrastination cost them time, money, and lost files.  Size-wise the Sapphire program is considerably smaller than the Code Red or NIMDA worms were. However, because it was so small it was able to penetrate systems, after its launch,  globally, in less than a minute(Lemos 2003). Systems administrators were simply not able to control the damage once it had been introduced into the servers. "It is memory-resident, so it  is very efficient," said Greg Shipley, director of consulting for security firm Neohapsis. "So there may be less number of hosts affected, but it is so chatty it saturates connections"(Lemos  2003). The worm was effective in doing what it was designed to do. In terms of how much damage it was allowed to do before it was stopped, then one  would have to say that it was not efficient. The size made it capable of penetrating rapidly, and its ability to interact and interface with a wide range of programs