Marker
03-29-2009, 08:43 PM
I want to hear about what you guys have to say about this. It's called Conficker C and is pretty deadly to any computer. It's supposed to happen April 1st. (April Fools Day)
A computer-science detective story is playing out on the Internet as security experts try to hunt down a worm called Conficker C and prevent it from damaging millions of computers on April Fool's Day.
The malicious program already is thought to have infected between 5 million and 10 million computers.
Those infections haven't spawned many symptoms, but on April 1 a master computer is scheduled to gain control of these zombie machines, said Don DeBolt, director of threat research for CA, a New York-based IT and software company.
What happens on April Fool's Day is anyone's guess.
The program could delete all of the files on a person's computer, use zombie PCs -- those controlled by a master -- to overwhelm and shut down Web sites or monitor a person's keyboard strokes to collect private information like passwords or bank account information, experts said.
More likely, though, said DeBolt, the virus may try to get computer users to buy fake software or spend money on other phony products.
Experts said computer hackers largely have moved away from showboating and causing random trouble. They now usually try to make money off their viral programs.
But the big news with "C" is that the code is scheduled to come alive on April 1 and start contacting the 50,000 domains and download something. What will they download? What will it make the bots do? Honestly, nobody knows. This is the great mystery.
Conficker is really sophisticated as malware goes. It's clear that its authors are smart people and perhaps that's what's got security people worried. But the only rational way to approach this is to do the things you know you need to do anyway and then not get hung up on it. Remember, there's a very good chance that on April 1 nothing much will happen.
Quote:
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.
It was on the News today. D:
So, you guys believe it?
Are you even going to turn on your computer on the 1st?
A computer-science detective story is playing out on the Internet as security experts try to hunt down a worm called Conficker C and prevent it from damaging millions of computers on April Fool's Day.
The malicious program already is thought to have infected between 5 million and 10 million computers.
Those infections haven't spawned many symptoms, but on April 1 a master computer is scheduled to gain control of these zombie machines, said Don DeBolt, director of threat research for CA, a New York-based IT and software company.
What happens on April Fool's Day is anyone's guess.
The program could delete all of the files on a person's computer, use zombie PCs -- those controlled by a master -- to overwhelm and shut down Web sites or monitor a person's keyboard strokes to collect private information like passwords or bank account information, experts said.
More likely, though, said DeBolt, the virus may try to get computer users to buy fake software or spend money on other phony products.
Experts said computer hackers largely have moved away from showboating and causing random trouble. They now usually try to make money off their viral programs.
But the big news with "C" is that the code is scheduled to come alive on April 1 and start contacting the 50,000 domains and download something. What will they download? What will it make the bots do? Honestly, nobody knows. This is the great mystery.
Conficker is really sophisticated as malware goes. It's clear that its authors are smart people and perhaps that's what's got security people worried. But the only rational way to approach this is to do the things you know you need to do anyway and then not get hung up on it. Remember, there's a very good chance that on April 1 nothing much will happen.
Quote:
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.
It was on the News today. D:
So, you guys believe it?
Are you even going to turn on your computer on the 1st?