Nasty Conflicker Virus/Worm has already infected over 9 million PC's

[Schlup]

Everybody is encouraged to download the application posted at the bottom of this post and run it to make sure they didn't get this nasty virus that will release it's fury on April 1st.  You can read more about it here...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/157876/protecting_against_the_rampant_conficker_worm.html

or here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker

[Schlup]

Tomorrow -- April 1 -- is D-Day for Conficker, as whatever nasty payload it's packing is currently set to activate. What happens come midnight is a mystery: Will it turn the millions of infected computers into spam-sending zombie robots? Or will it start capturing everything you type -- passwords, credit card numbers, etc. -- and send that information back to its masters?

No one knows, but we'll probably find out soon.

Or not. As Slate notes, Conficker is scheduled to go "live" on April 1, but whoever's controlling it could choose not to wreak havoc but instead do absolutely nothing, waiting for a time when there's less heat. They can do this because the way Conficker is designed is extremely clever: Rather than containing a list of specific, static instructions, Conficker reaches out to the web to receive updated marching orders via a huge list of websites it creates. Conficker.C -- the latest bad boy -- will start checking 50,000 different semi-randomly-generated sites a day looking for instructions, so there's no way to shut down all of them. If just one of those sites goes live with legitimate instructions, Conficker keeps on trucking.

Conficker's a nasty little worm that takes serious efforts to bypass your security defenses, but you aren't without some tools in your arsenal to protect yourself.

[Sir-diealot]

Sound like a cyber April Fools joke to me.

[Schlup]

Nope, it's for real...do a search on the internet, many national news companies such as CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC have done stories on it. 

[Schlup]

Came across this handy little eye chart for the Conflicker virus, if all the images at the top of the below link load correctly then you probably don't have the virus, any other combination and the directions are below the eye chart to show what you are dealing with.  Check it out!

http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html

[Sir-diealot]

Well then I guess I am safe. I am having speed issues though and this was the best result I got.

Nasty Conflicker Virus/Worm has already infected over 9 million PC's

[Schlup]

Seems about right if you are supposed to be getting 9 meg down and 512 up it's running a little slow but still well within your limits, however, I don't know what you are SUPPOSED to be getting.  You should let us know.

[Sir-diealot]

I used to get around 10-14 mb/s on the download.

[Schlup]

Well 9 isn't that much slower than 10.

[Schlup]

As expected, the April 1st activation date for the Conficker worm passed without much noise but, as Microsoft and others are explaining, the botnet associated with the worm is very much alive — and still potentially dangerous.

“[This threat] should remain a manageable cause for concern and it doesn’t go away after April 1,” says Microsoft’s Christopher Budd.  The malware still lives on millions of Windows machines and could start calling home for instructions at any time.

Now that the crazy hype has died down (hopefully!), it’s important for end users to get reliable information on eyeballing the presence of Conficker on a machine and, if it’s found, disinfection instructions from a Web site that isn’t blocked by the malware.

It’s also very tricky to point users to disinfection tools because they are all hosted on Web sites that are blocked.  The only one I’ve seen on an unblocked site is BitDefender’s bdtools.net, which offers disinfection tools for single PCs or networks.

If Conficker is not present on your machine, it’s important that you apply all Microsoft security updates immediately.


Early estimates are in, below shows the Conflicker botnet that has been infected and now is in control of the Conflicker makers.

World Map:

Nasty Conflicker Virus/Worm has already infected over 9 million PC's

USA Infections:

Nasty Conflicker Virus/Worm has already infected over 9 million PC's

Europe Infections:

Nasty Conflicker Virus/Worm has already infected over 9 million PC's

[Schlup]

Update:

The Conficker worm has started to update infected machines with a mystery package of data.

Computer security firms watching the malicious program noticed that it sprang into life late on 8 April.

The activity on its update system delivered encrypted software to compromised machines. It is not yet clear what the payload contains.

The Conficker virus variants are thought to be present on millions of PCs around the world.