The April 1st Conficker Worm is almost upon us!
As the April 1st Conficker Worm Doomsday quickly approaches, millions of PC owners are scrambling to protect their PCs as well as their personal info in what is threatened to be one of the worst computer virus outbreaks in history.
In the past few months, the Conficker virus has infected at least 3 million Windows PCs worldwide with malicious software, and perhaps as many as 12 million. At this time, there is a posse of PC security groups led by Microsoft laid up in a bunker (with coffee flowing) focusing on how to foil this virus and prevent more like it.
On April Fools’ Day 2009 — millions of infected PCs will begin reporting for further instructions. It is presumed that they will begin spreading spam, stealing data or carrying out online scams. At this point, it appears there is little that can be done to cut off such communications.
“We have not yet begun to feel the real impact of Conficker,” says Paul Henry, researcher at security firm Lumension. “We may soon be at the whim of those in control of what has emerged as a formidable army of infected machines.”
Conficker Worm Information
Conficker requires no action on the part of the PC user to spread. It’s a throwback to self-replicating worms that scanned the Internet for PCs displaying known — and unpatched — Windows security holes.
Conficker has built-in extraordinary measures to prevent each new PC (or Bot) from being disinfected by Microsoft or antivirus programs. It is suspected that Conficker’s encryption algorithm came from MIT’s Ron Rivest, copied from a recently published research paper.
Recently Microsoft put up a $250,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the Conficker Worm developers. Microsoft also formed an alliance of security groups, dubbed the Conficker Cabal, to battle the worm.
No one really knows exactly what the extent of the damage will be starting on April 1st, but it is suspected that this is the face of viruses to come. They are getting harder to track down and they have much more long-term capability. Imagine a world-wide network of PCs under the control of a virus that can give directives to those PCs at any time. The damage they can cause is unimaginable.
how in the world would such a ridiculous worm get in my system in the first place, i wonder?