Conficker Virus Update – The Waiting Game
April 9th, 2009
Computer virus Conficker has self-activated during the past couple of days. It has seemingly not yet performed any malicious processes, but it may be just a matter of time before it does.
“Computer security firms watching the malicious program noticed that it sprang into life late on 8 April. The activity on its update system delivered encrypted software to compromised machines. It is not yet clear what the payload contains. The Conficker virus variants are thought to be present on millions of PCs around the world.” BBC Technology News
Ficker Facts:
- In response Microsoft have created the Conficker Cabal, a group of internet security professionals who will try to disintegrate the worms’ progress.
- There are variants of Conficker; A, B, B++ and C, all designed to overcome certain issues, one of which may have been a “Direct response to Cabal’s efforts to disable Conficker’s communications strategy.”
- Microsoft have a $250,000 award in place to find the Conficker creators.
Don’t be Conned – How To Keep Safe
- Make sure you have Microsoft’s MS08-067 patch in place.
- Make sure all your passwords are strong. Avoid words that are in the dictionary, easily obtainable number combinations like birthdays, always use more than 6 characters and mix letters and numbers together. Try a password test like this one
- ALWAYS keep windows security and anti-virus software COMPLETELY up to date.
- One way to test if you’ve been infected by the Conficker worm is to try an access anti-virus websites. Because the worm wants to stay secret it may not let you access them.
Categories: ACS Blog
