Conficker
Conficker Worm Is Preparing to Launch On April Fool's Day
Here we go again! The Blackhats out there have once again infected a guestimate of 15 Million computers with the Conficker Worm also known as Downadup and Kido. Its payload is suppose to be felt in cyberspace on April 1, 2009 which has left Computer Security developers scrambling to minimize the damage. No, this isn't an April Fool's gag. Microsoft has even placed a bounty of $250K for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for creating the Conficker Internet worm that has infected millions of PCs. It's uncertain, at this time, how the creator of this virus plans on using these infected PC's on April 1st so we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, this worm is targetting a vulnerability in Window's Operating Systems. The good news is that there is a patch in place so as long as your Windows Updates are current and your PC is scanned with an updated anti-virus software on a regular basis, you should be unaffected. Conficker disables a number of system services such as Windows Automatic Update, Windows Security Center, Windows Defender and Windows Error Reporting. Most Anti-virus scanners will detect this worm so it's important to update and scan your PC's on a regular basis. Depending on the Anti-Virus software that you are using, this virus can appear as crypt.avl, win32/conficker.A, win32/conficker.B as well as Trojan.win32.pakes.lxf to name a few. Symptoms of the CF Virus can include but are not limited to the following:
Some of the above symptoms can be caused by other means so don't panic if all of a sudden you experience one of the above problems. If you suspect the Virus then the first thing to do is update and scan your PC with your Anti-Virus software. This virus has the ability to disable anti-virus software so double check the results by scanning again using a reliable free online scanner such as Kaspersky, Symantec, Panda Security or Housecall by Trend Micro. This will help put your mind at ease. Then visit the Windows Update page @ microsoft.com to ensure that all your patches are up to date. You can get to the Windows Update page by either visiting microsoft.com directly and looking for the Windows Update page under downloads or directly through the start menu on your Windows based PC.
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