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Beware! Who wants the Conficker worm on April 1st?


NinjaNick

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Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/128643/beware-conficker-worm-come-april-1/

Beware Conficker worm come April 1

Tue Mar 24, 2009 6:21PM EDT

Buzz up!on Yahoo!In an event that hits the computer world only once every few years, security experts are racing against time to mitigate the impact of a bit of malware which is set to wreak havoc on a hard-coded date. As is often the case, that date is April 1.

Malware creators love to target April Fool's Day with their wares, and the latest worm, called Conficker C, could be one of the most damaging attacks we've seen in years.

Conficker first bubbled up in late 2008 and began making headlines in January as known infections topped 9 million computers. Now in its third variant, Conficker C, the worm has grown incredibly complicated, powerful, and virulent... though no one is quite sure exactly what it will do when D-Day arrives.

Thanks in part to a quarter-million-dollar bounty on the head of the writer of the worm, offered by Microsoft, security researchers are aggressively digging into the worm's code as they attempt to engineer a cure or find the writer before the deadline. What's known so far is that on April 1, all infected computers will come under the control of a master machine located somewhere across the web, at which point anything's possible. Will the zombie machines become denial of service attack pawns, steal personal information, wipe hard drives, or simply manifest more traditional malware pop-ups and extortion-like come-ons designed to sell you phony security software? No one knows.

Conficker is clever in the way it hides its tracks because it uses an enormous number of URLs to communicate with HQ. The first version of Conficker used just 250 addresses each day -- which security researchers and ICANN simply bought and/or disabled -- but Conficker C will up the ante to 50,000 addresses a day when it goes active, a number which simply can't be tracked and disabled by hand.

At this point, you should be extra vigilant about protecting your PC: Patch Windows completely through Windows Update and update your anti-malware software as well. Make sure your antivirus software is actually running too, as Conficker may have disabled it.

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anyone watch 60 minutes that aired last night involving the conflicker virus?..from what i understood that they it lays idle but is in millions of pcs, and they have yet to kill it or find where it originated. seems like it could be a good one if indeed it does come to life more than it has..amazing how they hhave it set up to look like your buddy is sending you an email on facebook myspace or your regular e mail.they showed these teenagers from russia whos job is to try to destroy the united states computer systems and are making like 30k a month, while the government looks away :eek:

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I saw it. That's pretty scary that some 12 year old in Russia can plant viruses all over the world. Hopefully its some jokester who is gonna just do something silly, but that's really just wishful thinking.

Anyone catch Andy Rooney?? :lol:

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If you missed the news this weekend, a military style attack was caught on various government computers around the world. One source said 1300 infected, but not all compromised yet. China is supposedly the source.

I've seen a change in recent attacks that appeared to be aimed at military type users. Meant to infect the computer with a silent control/theft of info.

It's CyberWar. Or practice for it. It's all about money or power...

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inya what do you do?
since he's in meetings about the conflicker virus, I can only assume he works at a petting zoo....

I manage firewalls for Medical Mutual of Ohio and other customers. On the weekends I like to molest llamas at my other gig.

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