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Conficker virus to create havoc on internet

Mar 30, 2009 News


…over 12M PCs infected

Digital Technology has revealed that a virus by the name of Conficker C is slated to be unleashed on April 1st and is expected to create havoc on the internet.
According to the digital company, which is located at lot 54 Grove Public Road East Bank Demerara, Conficker. C or Downadup C is a family of “worms” (malicious computer software programs) whose purpose is to infect a computer and then spread itself to other computers without any human interaction.
It was explained that no one entirely understands the purpose of this worm in its entirety at this time. What is known is that Conficker has been created as a two-stage threat.
The first stage of Conficker is to infect as many computers that are running Microsoft Windows Operating System (Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows XP) as possible. It is estimated that over 12 million computers are already infected.
There are three known variants of the worm –  Conficker.A, Conficker.B and Conficker.C.
On April 1, these infected computers with the variant A and B will try to update to Conficker.C in order to move into its second stage. These computers may not be able to receive further security updates or patches from Microsoft and from many other antivirus vendors.
Digital Technology noted that many computers in Guyana are at potential risk, since many computers are not running legal copies of Windows and are set not to receive updates from Microsoft, which includes the MS08-067 patch.
Security Teams (such as the Antivirus Vendors) have already detected infected computers within Guyana.
The second stage is not yet fully understood, since these computers will now be under the control of the Conficker programmer(s) awaiting its next instruction.
“This means we are at the whims of the programmer(s) of the worm, who can choose to use this opportunity to make any kind of illegal decisions. Such acts can include mass spamming (sending junk mails in large quantities), or any other e-crimes,” the company stated.
Persons can know that their computers are infected, since the worm tries to block sites with updates and removal tools.
“Type any of the following websites in your browser; f-secure.com, secureworks.com, microsoft.com or other security sites. If you get “page cannot be displayed” error for all the sites, there’s a good chance that your system is already infected with Conficker.”

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