Blaster from the past: The worm that zapped XP 10 years ago
Ten years ago this week, the Blaster worm swept through Windows XP and Windows 2000 networks, bringing some government agencies to a halt and perhaps contributing to a major power blackout in the Northeast U.S.
Blaster, also dubbed the DCOM Worm and Lovsan, first appeared on Aug. 11, 2003, and exploited a known Windows vulnerability in a component that handled the RPC (Remote Procedure Call) protocol. Microsoft had patched the bug the month before.
The worm targeted Microsoft's Windows Update service and website for a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). But because the hackers aimed at the wrong URL, the attack did not hamper Windows Update's operation.
