One thing about the year 2009 is that it saw it’s share of online threats.
As a matter of fact, there were probably more threats seen in 2009 than in any year prior.
There are more and more hackers that are seeing the financial benefits that can be made by introducing new exploits to the average computer user.
Also, there are a lot more hacker kits that are available.
They allow a person who is not skilled in creating an exploit to have the ability to use one anyway.
All of these factors mixed together made 2009 and dangerous year on the Internet.
The Conficker Worm
None of the threats that were out there caused more problems than the conficker worm.
This worm took traction in 2009 and wouldn’t stop.
The conficker worm could be easily one of the worse infections that has spread through the Internet for the entire decade, not just 2009.
First found in the wild at the end of 2008, this worm quickly spread to users of the Microsoft Windows operating system family.
After the worm was first discovered, it was hard to stop the infection on user’s computers because the worm itself kept transforming.
The creators of the worm would monitor recent developments that would hopefully help stop the spread of it and they adjusted accordingly.
This is part of the reason why the worm goes by so many different names.
Besides Conflicker, it also known as Downup and the Kido worm.
The worm was able to spread so much and so quick that Microsoft offered a huge bounty on the heads of whoever wrote the worm.
They were determined to eliminate the threat if not by technology, then through old fashion police work.
They were able to discover what region of the world the worm was originating from, but they were not able to find the person or persons responsible for it.
Antivirus Avoidance
For a long time, antivirus software was not able to get rid of every variant of the worm.
Now they all claim to be able to detect and dispose of the worm on a users system.
This seems to be true since the spread of the worm has rapidly decreased in the last couple of months.
The worm was so successful that there is no doubt that the creators of it are working on a 2.0 version.
Since they haven’t been caught, they get the chance to work on all of the mistakes they made.
This time, they can make it even more untraceable.
Out of all the malware that was released in the past year, the Conficker worm proved to be the biggest pest.
It was able to baffle network administrators and security professionals everywhere.
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