And not a bug stirred in the house. Well not quite. Microsoft has now confirmed the existence of a exploitable bug within Microsoft SQL Server. Whilst no patch is available as yet, work arounds have been provided.

Also in the news this week is the story of three major undersea communications cables being cut, majorly impacting upon internet communcations between the Middle East and Asia. This raises the interesting question in does your disaster recovery plan to into account that your redundant links may share a common international carrier?

With the holiday seasons normally comes a tendency to be lax on security in particular the checking of logs for suspicous activities. Unfortunatley the bad guys know this as well and want to play the part of the Grinch so keep an eye out when you can.

With that the AusCERT team wishes everyone a safe and happy Christmas and a great New Year!

-Daniel