Conficker: We're All Still Here and WWIII-free
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.
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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yoda8232 Keep your anti-virus and all that crap running and up to date and you should be fine.Reply -
jsloan microsoft should bundle comprehensive anti-virus and anti-spyware, anti-spam software with all versions of windows.Reply
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neiroatopelcc yoda8232Keep 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'tReply -
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?Reply -
mtyermom tenor77Ever see that movie with that guy about aliens invading the earth with a timer countdown embedded in our satellites....Independent hour was it?Reply
Independence Day -
juvealert 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.Reply
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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
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juvealert jsloanmicrosoft should bundle comprehensive anti-virus and anti-spyware, anti-spam software with all versions of windows.Reply
Microsoft products already suck man!!! adding the mentioned features would make windows even worst than it is -
danimal_the_animal AVG caught it!!!Reply
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.....