Conficker Worm Finally Begins Attacking PCs

[mercurial]

BOSTON — A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said.

Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning thousands of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam and installing spyware, they said.

The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers and turning them into "slaves" that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet.

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[Spartaniz]

from www.tweakguides.com:

"Conficker Worm
1 April 2009

A reminder that the highly malicious Conficker Worm is now officially 'active' as of 1 April. So far there are no reports of any major problems caused by the worm, and systems kept up to date with this Windows Patch released by Microsoft back in October 2008 are protected from it. However to make sure you do not have the worm, or to remove it if you do have it, you can use the latest Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, or the free Conficker removal tools found at Symantec or McAfee. If you find and remove Conficker on your system, be sure to at least apply the Windows patch above afterwards; better yet, run Windows Update and make sure you install all available critical updates immediately."

http://www.tweakguides.com/newsarch.html