News

Roll-up Patch Issued for SQL Server

• By Scott Bekker
• August 20, 2002

A fix for a new flaw involving extended stored procedures in SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 prompted Microsoft to roll up all the recent SQL Server patches. The new vulnerability rates as a moderate threat on Microsoft's security threat scale, but Redmond has kept SQL Server administrators hopping over the last month.

Bulletin MS02-043, issued late last week, contains the first SQL Server patch for August. But in July, database administrators saw five separate security bulletins dealing with SQL Server, including a cumulative patch early in that month.

The newly reported problem with SQL Server involves weak permissions with some of the extended stored procedures Microsoft's ships with SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000. Microsoft defines extended stored procedures as external routines written in a programming language such as C or C#. Some of the extended stored procedures shipped by Microsoft can reconnect to the database as the SQL Server service account, which in some cases could allow an attacker to run procedures on the server with administrative privileges.

The bulletin and patch can be found here:
www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-043.asp.