Greetings fellow crackberrians. This is important. For those of you who don't know there is a nasty virus that will be unleashed on april 1st. Its a sleeper virus so you might have it now and it won't activate until said date. It will deactivate all security software and steal personal information. Protect yourself by doing windows update, updating your antivirus, and downloading the scanner/remover from Symantec's website. The scan/remove tool is called FixDwndp. Its in the most popular download section on symantec's site. Good luck and take care. Note: Mac and Linux users are unaffected by the conflicker worm.
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I've been reading a lot about this virus. Microsoft has a bounty on the head of the creator- if they can ever find who is it.
Apparently Microsoft has been working day and night for a patch or something to that affect.
Does any1 know if you use your bb to access the internet (ie-banking) is your bb affected?? Tia if any1 can answer this!
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I would highly doubt it. Worms and viruses like this target key parts of the Windows operating system. The BB Os is completely different and should not be affected or infected as the case may be.
Origins: Conficker.C (also known as Kido or Downadup) is the third iteration of a worm which first began slithering its way onto Windows-based PCs in November 2008, with each version growing more sophisticated than the last. Like many other forms of malware, after it has infected a target computer (by downloading a Trojan), it tries to prevent its removal by disabling anti-virus software and blocking access to security-related web sites.
The Conficker worm's purpose is to create a "botnet" of infected computers that can be controlled by Conficker's creators, allowing them to engage in such activities as stealing stored information from those computers, launching attacks against particular web sites, or directing infected machines to send out spam
e-mails. Although no one is quite sure how many computers have already been infected by Conficker, estimates place the number upwards of a couple of million.
Beginning on 1 April 2009, infected computers will start attempting to "call home" (i.e., contact control servers in the botnet) in order to receive Conficker updates, which has led to claims that some apocalyptic cyber-event will occur on that date and result in millions of computers being wiped out or large portions of the Internet being disabled. Although no one really knows what's going to happen with Conficker on (or after) that date, security experts have opined that it likely won't be nearly as substantial as some of the wilder speculation would have it:
Security researchers say the reality is probably going to be more like what happened when the clocks on the world's computers turned to January 1, 2000, after lots of dire predictions about the so-called millennium bug. That is, not much at all.
"It doesn't mean we're going to see some large cyber event on April 1," Dean Turner, director of the global intelligence network at Symantec Security Response, said.
It's likely that the people behind Conficker are interested in using the botnet, which is comprised of all the infected computers, to make money by distributing spam or other malware, experts speculate. To do so, they would need the computers and networks to stay in operation.
"Most of these criminals, even though they haven't done something with this botnet yet, are profit-driven," said Paul Ferguson, an advanced-threats researcher for Trend Micro. "They don't want to bring down the infrastructure. That would not allow them to continue carrying out their scams."
In February 2009, Microsoft announced it had formed a partnership with other technology agencies to coordinate a response to Conficker and was offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for launching the Conficker code on the Internet. In October 2008, Microsoft issued a patch to close a vulnerability in Windows-based systems that could be used for a wormable exploit, and in March 2009 it published an alert with instructions and tools for stopping the spread of Conficker and removing it from infected systems.
Haha. Hope Microsoft bodes well. They just laid off most of their internal information security team, my fiance included. If they have any issues...will you join me in some laughing?
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I've been reading a lot about this virus. Microsoft has a bounty on the head of the creator- if they can ever find who is it.
Apparently Microsoft has been working day and night for a patch or something to that affect.
Thank goodness for Apple!!
Correct, Microsoft is offering $250,000 for the person or persons who created this. They believe the developers are in eastern Europe, but have not confirmed. This thing could be devastating...
Run symantec anti virus if you are worried they can find it. It sopossed to be passes through p2p sharing sites like limewire. Or if you use wifi at like coffee shops you can get it.
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First off let me correct the misinformation on this thread and in the news.
1. The Conficker virus is not laying dormant right now waiting to "go off" April 1st. If you are infected it has tried (and probably succeeded) on disabling your anti-virus/firewall software/Windows Update software.
It is already "calling home" right now by trying to connect to different websites to get new "instructions." If you have the virus, you would know by now, you would not be able to get to websites that have to do with anti-virus products or the Microsoft update page plus you would notice your firewall/virus scan products are not active.
2. This virus does NOT have a payload, so it will not suddenly "destroy" your PC tonight at Midnight. If your copy of Windows has the patch that was released in OCTOBER of last year, your computer is NOT going to be magically infected tonight at midnight because you are still online.
3. They are claiming that as many as 1 in 16 PC's have the Conficker Virus.....which is true....but what they are NOT telling you is that there are different variants of the virus. The one that will call home more often starting tomorrow (Conficker.C) infects a small percentage of total PC's that are infected with some type of the Conficker virus.
4. The only difference that April 1st is going to make is that this virus will check 50,000 websites a day instead 500 for "new" instructions. That's ALL the virus is programmed to do tomorrow.
5. Since the virus is set to check 50,000 websites instead of 500 starting tomorrow, there is a possibility that it was set to increase tomorrow because the writers of the virus want to send it a new instruction(s). The more websites the virus checks the better chance it has of getting the new instruction(s).
However, the virus writers probably picked April 1st as a joke and were planning to increase the amount of websites the virus would check anyway. Security companies could actively shutdown or block websites that the virus was checking when it was only checking 500 a day. So, the virus writers decided to increase that to 50,000 a day to make it impossible to shutdown. Why April 1st? That's the question, more than likely because it was April fools day and they have a sense of humor......a twisted one at that.
6. More than likely NOTHING will happen tomorrow, it's hype set up by the media.
7. You will not get this virus sitting at a local coffee shop if your copy of Windows is up to date on the patches, (it exploits a vunerability in Windows that was PATCHED LAST OCTOBER!) So as long as you have your PC patched since October you are OK.
They are way better anyway.