Conficker Final Update

As you all know, there has been a lot of hype about the “conficker c” virus/worm. I am not inclined to say that it was exactly that … a lot of hype. The plain fact of the matter is is that most computer users were already protected from the nasty little critter … people are becoming more aware of the dangers that exist on the www and  how these dangers can impact their investment of time and money.

Never-the-less, I thought that I should provide you a final update on this April 1 Critter Alert so I went to the virus on-line database of the anti-virus software that I use, Grisoft AVG 8.5,  and dug out their up-to-date info to provide to you (and also kept their links in tact so that you could verify the source info yourself).

[from avg.com/top-threats]

Downadup/Conficker worm

We saw a large amount of infections from the Downadup worm last month. This worm is also known as Conficker or Kido and is able to spread very quickly because it uses 3 effective ways to propogate:

Exploits a Windows vulnerability MS08-067. The patch was released a long time ago but there are still a lot of unpatched computers.

Exploiting network shares with weak or no passwords. The worm contains a list of common passwords – a good reason to use strong passwords.

Copies itself to removable media, usually USB sticks. Using the AutoRun function (creates autorun.inf file)

The first versions of Downadup were seen at the start of December 08 and until now we have observed more than 300 different variants. All known variants are detected and healed by AVG. Besides spreading, the worm can also download other malware and can redirect legitimate URLs access to various other malicious webpages.

We strongly recommend that you install all of the latest security patches for your version of Windows. Microsoft have also released a special KB article here.