Detroit News
REDMOND, Wash. – Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, said traffic on its Web sites was slowed by a computer virus Saturday after some workers failed to fix a glitch by using a program it had recommended to clients six months earlier.
The “Slammer” worm slowed the company’s Web sites and attempts by Microsoft employees to access the Internet from their computers in the first few hours after it spread on Saturday, spokesman Rick Miller said. The virus attacks a flaw in Microsoft’s SQL Server program for databases.
Microsoft released a program to fix the problem in July and again in October. Some employees hadn’t applied the patch, Miller said, and the company doesn’t have a system to uniformly update all its computers. Customers and security experts have complained that Microsoft releases too many updates for users to keep up, as recent viruses attacked flaws for which a patch was already available