Worm Infects Millions of Computers Worldwide

I found this article titled, Worm Infects Millions of Computers Worldwide, in the New York Times. It was written back on January 22, 2009, so it is about five months old, but the topic at hand is very interesting and has come up in recent discussions within our Sec/Mat 270 course.

The article is about the this recent malicious worm known as Conficker or Downadup. Conficker is a malicious software program which has effected corporate, educational, and public computer networks around the entire world and it's spreading like wildfire. It has spread so rapidly because of a vulnerability within Microsoft Windows, by guessing network passwords and by hand-carried consumer gadgets, such as USB drives. It has said to have infected over nine million personal computers around the world, and that was back in January. We recently saw the Conficker worm reappear about a month ago, but luckily enough the worm/virus did not cause much damage to computer networks around the country. The Conficker worm is such a threat to computer networks because it harnesses infected computers into unified systems called botnets, which ultimately can accept instructions from a "head master". These instructions are usually used to attempt malicious attacks and used for illegal use to obtain confidential information on someones personal computer or a corporate, educational, and/or public computer. The other bad thing about Conficker is the fact that it is very hard to tell whether or not your computer is infected, as the worm usually hides and operates in the background or "behind the scenes", using the infected computer to send spam and infect other computer's.

Researches said that Conficker was so successful and still can be successful because of the lax security measures taken by companies and individuals. Alot of people don't realize the effects that these malicious viruses and worms can have on ones computer and the information that is vulnerable. For example, about two months ago my Norton Anti-virus security program expired on my computer and I put off renewing the program for about one week. Not realizing the vulnerabilities I was subjecting my computer and network too, I got a really bad virus/spyware within just a matter of a week of having my computer not fully protected. It cost me over $100 to fix and two weeks of me not having a computer because the virus basically blocked me from the Internet. Luckily no personal information was stolen, as far as I know, but I will never again underestimate the power and malicious abilities of hackers today. Symantec is actually one of the security response teams that worked on the conficker worm and their services helped solve my virus/spyware as well. It is extremely vital that one always protects his or her computer at all times, as you could your confidential information can be exposed to the entire world in a matters of seconds.