FOR THOSE who have not noticed, as Windows numbers go down Microsoft is starting to float Vista 8, selling the illusion that it's almost here and that it will do everything anyone has ever conceived. By doing this, Microsoft may discourage some businesses' migration to Vista 7; people whom I know closely are having problems with Vista 7 and some regret leaving XP to move to it (this afternoon I had one person tell me this). On the other hand, Microsoft resorts to talking about products that do not yet exist in the market because, as its internal documents put it [PDF], "In the face of strong competition, Evangelism's focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X."
Early reports suggested that the attackers were hitting sites using Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005 and it is thought that weaknesses in associated web application software are proving vulnerable.
Ongoing analysis of the attack reveals that the attackers managed to inject code to display links to 21 separate domains. The exact numbers of sites hit by the attack is hard to judge but a Google search for the attackers' domains shows more than three million weblinks are displaying them.
--Steve Ballmer, 2001