Letter to the Editor
There are a lot of headlines like "Bot Attacks U.S. Media Giants" as if the computer worm were targeted at them. But my question is - where were their system administrators? The news agencies reported the vulnerability a week ago. Then they reported that a worm was in development. Then they reported that Microsoft developed a patch to fix the problem. Now they are complaining about being hit.
My question is - why didn't the tech staff at the news agencies download and apply the security patches that Microsoft provided before the worm hit?
Although it's a nuisance, these attacks are a part of online life these days and are generally preventable by keeping current on all the latest patches and having a properly configured firewall to keep intruders from getting in. If their tech staff were listening to their news reports these news agencies wouldn't have been hit.
If I were CNN, ABC, and The New York Times I would be asking their own tech staff why they didn't install the security patches rather than imagining that they were targeted. And - if you're running Windows, always install the latest patches.