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Conficker Strikes…Or Does it?
August 04, 2009 6:30 AM
You remember the Conficker worm, don't you? Well?
If you don't, or if you're going, "Oh, yeah, that thing," maybe that's good. The Conficker botnet, a devilishly well-written piece of rogue computer code that threatened ominously to do something undefined on April 1 -- well, it turned out to be one of history's great April-Fool's letdowns.
But it's still out there. Some computer scientists say there are more than 5.5 million computers that are still infected, though they're far away from most Americans. The worst infestations seem to be in Brazil, China and Vietnam.
Take a look at Sean Michael Kerner's piece on InternetNews.com about last week's Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas. He quotes Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the computer security firm F-Secure:
"The gang behind Conficker are no fools," Hypponen said. "They know their stuff, they know coding, development cycles, crypto and they are clever and they are watching us, their enemy in the security industry."
The headline from the conference seems to have been that security people there couldn't tell all they had learned about Conficker. Everyone expected the perpetrators to have been found out by now.
But there was this one intriguing bit: that perhaps its creators had set it loose...and then left it to run on its own around the Internet.
"The botnet is currently growing, but the authors do not seem to be doing much of anything with it," said Roel Schouwenberg in an interview with Kerner.
What was Conficker meant to do, other than drive computer people nuts (and perhaps drive you to buy anti-virus software)? Nobody's sure, but there were some suggestions that its mission is pretty mundane. It may have been meant to infest computers, and use them to -- hold on to your chair -- send out spam.
August 4, 2009 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Share | User Comments (9)
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Then why bother write it at all? Make more sense that it was written as a "place holder". One a second virus will be distributed. Finding the already infected computers, with a not so benign purpose.
Posted by: SJman | Aug 4, 2009 12:23:47 PM
The people who write all these nasty bugs and then let them loose are obviously exceedingly smart however in reality they are also exceedingly stupid in regards to humanitarian purposes. They create chaos and confusion and in the end what does it matter, they will die like everyone else and instead of the world recognizing them as a great person they will turn their heads in disgust.
Posted by: ariesstar | Aug 4, 2009 1:34:03 PM
Could also have been just a test to see how well it worked this go around and then later on they plan on releasing something that really does some damage.
Posted by: Greg | Aug 4, 2009 1:37:34 PM
Not only are the coders of this bug professionals, but they have also written code to compromise the ATM system. Todays news reports indicate that the RIO hotel ATMS were victim of a hacker code attack.
I myself was a victim of this same code attack at the Excalibur casino on 7/17 and 7/20.Investigation is pending but my gut instinct( I do cybersecurity for a living) tells me this is a hack.
Get ready as they reveal a code invasion of our ATM system.
Posted by: digidef | Aug 4, 2009 4:16:24 PM
With this kind of publicity, the "bidding" on something like this could be astronomical. Maybe it's just about the money.
Posted by: 1enlightened | Aug 4, 2009 5:21:10 PM
They definitely know what they're doing and they're just lurking around waiting for the right time to make their attack on computers, if they haven't done it yet.
Posted by: skc969 | Aug 5, 2009 8:48:32 AM
Most people do not realise that their pc is infected.Others do not bother if the virus or pc is not giving problem.The hackers are still upgrading and introducing harder to detect virus.Most pc's,pendrives,handphones and gadgets will have the W32.virut.CL or an upgraded version of it if you use a clean computer with the norton 2010 beta antivirus.The norton 2010 only detects the virut and not the other parts of conficker that goes in and controls the S.V.I tracking and the Recycler or the newer Recycled folder.Check conficker-updates in googlegroups for more info.
Posted by: C_Killer | Aug 10, 2009 11:00:36 AM
Be careful,norton 2010 beta does not protect your pc from being infected or reinfected.The pc which was used to detect and clean the virut from hdd's was found to be infected when norton 2010 beta expired,when means it was suppressed when norton 2010 beta was active.
I would say majority of pc's that has been connected with pendrives are infected.
Posted by: C_Killer | Aug 10, 2009 11:16:06 AM
the Conficker worm seems to have failed to live up to it's apocalyptic reputation, but that's obviously a good thing
Posted by: Computer Support | Oct 5, 2009 2:21:33 AM
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