Your Questions About Conficker Patch Windows
Steven asks…
Am I Protected from this?
How do I find out if my computer has the Windows Update patch that protects me from the Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker worms? I hear it's spreading rapidly, and I just don't want to get it.
I do have Windows Update, and I just finished downloading the latest update and then I installed it. So I should be fine, right?
dave answers:
You can be sure by running MBSA
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc184924.aspx
Michael asks…
Biggest Computer Virus Ever?
Have you cought it yet or know anyone who has.i think they have been talking about it for the past 2 days
This is some info on it at the bottom
This one is nasty. Very, very nasty. Called "Conficker" or "Downadup," this new computer worm has infected more than 9 million computers and is spreading at the rate of 1 million a day, according to the software protection firm, F-Secure. "This is enormous; possibly the biggest virus we have ever seen," software security specialist David Perry of Trend Micro told Agence France Presse.
Here's the real puzzler: So far, the virus has done no damage. Does that mean it's impotent, or does it portend a far more nefarious outcome? It could just be waiting to detonate, or it could be a test run by cybercriminals intent on profiting from the weakness in the future. "I think the bad guys are field testing a new technology," Perry told AFP. "If Conficker proves to work well, they could go out and sell malware (malicious software) to people. There is a huge market for selling criminal malware."
The worm is self-replicating and spreads on networks and computers that do not have the security patches for Windows RPC Server Service. It can infect machines from the Internet or even by hiding on USB memory sticks that carry data from one computer to another, reports AFP. Once Conficker is on a computer, it's almost impossible to remove. "Here we are with a big, big outbreak, and they keep revamping their methodology to increase the size of it," Perry warned to AFP. "They could be growing this huge botnet to slice it up and sell it on the criminal market." If that happened, the infected computers would be "zombie"machines that would do the cybercriminals' bidding.
One very troubling "feature" of this virus: It uses the brute force of computing power to try to crack the passwords of the machine being attacked. "That is something never seen before, and I find it disturbing," Perry told AFP. He advises people to choose better passwords. Mix in numbers, punctuation marks and upper-case letters to make them harder to deduce. Also, record your passwords in a paper notebook. "No hacker in the world can hack the written page locked away in your office," he told AFP.
dave answers:
For right now i would have to say the vundo trojan(Virtumonde or Virtumondo) has had a pretty good run,and caused a great deal of misery.
This Conficker worm does seem pretty scary.
The problem is their are Always those people who will pickup zero-day infections before the Anti-Virus companies can provide signatures.
Heuristics come into there own at that time.
Virtualization software seems the best way to go,in addition to your firewall and Anti-Virus.
Sandboxie for your browser,or returnil for total system.
Also keep not only Windows patched,but Flash,and other programs that go online.
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