Time is Relative
Lots of people blogging bitching out that Symantec knew that Slammer was coming. This stems from a press release put out by Symantec this morning.
From the Wired News article (emphasis mine):
“Within 10 minutes of debuting at 5:30 a.m. (UTC) Jan. 25 (9:30 p.m. PST, Jan. 24), the worm was observed to have infected more than 75,000 vulnerable hosts,” the researchers’ report read in part.
According to Symantec spokesman Yunsun Wee, Symantec issued an alert about Slammer to DeepSight Threat Management System subscribers “at approximately 9 p.m. PST on Friday, Jan. 24.”
Most of the rest of the Internet didn’t spot Slammer until shortly after midnight EST on Saturday, Jan. 25th.
So apparently “the rest of the Internet” didn’t see Slammer until “midnight EST”. Symantec knew about it at “9pm PST”. So… that would be exactly the same time then. (0500 UTC)
The real problem here is that Symantec are boasting that they gave their customers a whole 40 minutes notice of a problem. At midnight. On a Friday night. Woo! Sign me up for that service.
I'm
About 9 years ago, Paul commented:
Yes .. and >? 40 mins on a friday night..
Its relative mate ... we are all not ON USA TIME now are we.... and you seem a little bitter ?
surely you have updated and service patched your sql server now didnt you ?