Conficker: We're All Still Here and WWIII-free

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9:51 AM - April 1, 2009 by Jane McEntegart

In recent months news, about the Conficker worm has come in a steady stream and in the last few weeks people really began to worry about what might happen on the first of April this year.

The latest estimates suggest that the Conficker virus has spread to up to 15 million machines. F-Secure said last week that so far, Conficker has been polling 250 different domain names every day to download and run an update program. On April 1st, the latest version of Conficker is supposed to start polling 500 out of 50,000 domains a day to do the same thing. If this is true, those millions of computers should be doing something by now and they are, kind of.

We were skeptical about the Conficker virus from the beginning and while we did our best to keep our hair on about the whole affair, we couldn’t help but feel a glimmer of anticipation at the thought that something might happen. Despite being fast asleep by midnight, when the sun rose this morning, we woke up unharmed, as did our computers. According to an F-Secure post, Conficker has activated but so far, nothing has actually happened. Go figure.

“Infected computers use the local time as the trigger to start generating the list of 50,000 domains, so in places where the local time is already April 1st, these computers are now actively polling for domains.

And, until the GMT date is April 1st they are in fact polling for domains for 31st March. So far there hasn't been any updates available on those sites.

In summary: Conficker has activated. So far nothing has actually happened.”


Obviously, we’ll be keeping you posted on this one, but we’re not chewing our nails down to the nubs just yet. Yes, it’s doing something, but nothing of consequence, yet.

Source : Tom's Hardware US

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yoda8232 04/01/2009 4:27 PM
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Keep your anti-virus and all that crap running and up to date and you should be fine.

danimal_the_animal 04/01/2009 4:35 PM
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jsloan 04/01/2009 4:36 PM
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neiroatopelcc 04/01/2009 4:41 PM
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yoda8232 :
Keep your anti-virus and all that crap running and up to date and you should be fine.


Not if you're using CA's antivirus you aren't

tenor77 04/01/2009 4:47 PM
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Anonymous 04/01/2009 5:18 PM
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lol, Independence Day

mtyermom 04/01/2009 5:27 PM
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tenor77 :
Ever see that movie with that guy about aliens invading the earth with a timer countdown embedded in our satellites....Independent hour was it?



Independence Day

juvealert 04/01/2009 5:28 PM
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Once I had told my mates that the next act of terrorism is cyber-terrorism and unfortunately they had a good piss out of it since they are computer illiterate :( !!! In spite that they had a good laugh and accused me of being a “cyber retard” is still do believe in my statement.

------Citation ------
If i’m not mistaken we have already witnessed a “Cyber-War” recently when Russia invaded Georgia and the Russians DDoS the Georgian servers.
If i'm not mistaken there was a news report on this web site
-----------------------

juvealert 04/01/2009 5:30 PM
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danimal_the_animal 04/01/2009 5:43 PM
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AVG caught it!!!

WHY cant antivirus/malware software that you PAY FOR stop these viruses....i mean some companies take TWO YEARS to come up with a fix! It's almost as if the virus writers are paying off the companies to not protect people....must be the virus mafia.

at least AVG protects me.....

danimal_the_animal 04/01/2009 5:51 PM
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daenja 04/01/2009 6:29 PM
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Maybe that's the point, design the world's scariest virus, infect the most machines and have it do... NOTHING, on April fool's day.

MustWarnOthers 04/01/2009 6:31 PM
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Why do the users posting comments on Toms Hardware have such a hard time understanding that WWIII was mentioned as an exaggerated poke at the severity of the problem.

Greatwalrus 04/01/2009 6:41 PM
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danimal_the_animal :
What the heck does WWIII have to do with a virus...SO RETARDED!Quit living in a fantasy world people...we dont have terminators or skynet!!!!!



It's a joke/sarcasm!!!!!

Quit living in literal world people!

tayb 04/01/2009 6:45 PM
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Norton guys are trying to sell you virus protection for the guys a floor down in their corporate head quarters writing the viruses.

Anyone think it is a mere coincidence that none of these anti-virus companies have been able to track down this virus or its origin, the virus does absolutely NOTHING harmful to your machine, and the companies are all over the news begging people to buy their software?

Yeah...

etrnl_frost 04/01/2009 6:48 PM
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And this would be the april fools.

pei-chen 04/01/2009 7:37 PM
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The machines are attacking....They killed everyone....We have barricaded in the basement....Missile control room taken....mobile EMP generator built by GM not working....

m3kt3k 04/01/2009 8:12 PM
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MAN I must doing my job to well. I do freelance computer work and so far today..Nothing ALL in all I recived 3 calls about this and all were "So im all set right".... NEXT TIME WRITE A BETTER VIRUS.. I need the money.

Anonymous 04/01/2009 9:20 PM
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I was sort-of hoping for the worst from this virus. Maybe new instructions to exploit newer (or even unknown) vulnerabilities so it could infect even more machines. Then a DOS attack that brings the internet to a crawl, flooding with private & sensitive information found on the infected computer (credit card #s, files in hidden folders, passwords, Word docs, etc.) Then when a feeble attempt is made to remove the virus, it'll trash the hard drive, flash the most common types of BIOS with garbage, and send shedloads of animal porn to all the printers it can find. It would've been so beautiful.

gto127 04/01/2009 10:28 PM
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I'm going to start doing all my financial dealings on the wii game console which I assume is safe from identity theft. The virus makers won't have anything left to steal off my PC.

sonofliberty08 04/02/2009 4:05 AM
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switch to Linux and u will be safe i guess :)

warezme 04/02/2009 4:45 AM
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sonofliberty08 :
switch to Linux and u will be safe i guess



mmm, yea (sarcasm), thats like moving to a small isolated island to avoid the problems of humanity, it works but its a lonely world. Macs...., a slightly larger island full of stuck up people, with lots of mirrors, not much better.

ProDigit80 04/02/2009 3:33 PM
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can't someone set up a small network which has the time set to a faster time?
Eg:
Get a bioshack that would run the time x 2.

etrnl_frost 04/02/2009 4:02 PM
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warezme :
mmm, yea (sarcasm), thats like moving to a small isolated island to avoid the problems of humanity, it works but its a lonely world. Macs...., a slightly larger island full of stuck up people, with lots of mirrors, not much better.


But the mirrors are so SHINY. Too bad they cost so much.

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