Time constraints in an effective cyber attack?

The Slammer worm, also known as the Sapphire worm, hit at 5:30 a.m. GMT on Jan. 25, 2003 -- Superbowl weekend. Exploiting a vulnerability in servers running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 software, Slammer was the fastest cyber attack in history. According to a team of researchers from the University of California at San Diego, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and Silicon Defense, the number of infections doubled every 8.5 seconds and Slammer did 90 percent of its damage in the first 10 minutes of its release. Among other things, the worm took down parts of the Internet in South Korea and Japan, disrupted phone service in Finland, and slowed airline reservation systems, credit card networks, and automatic teller machines in the U.S.