Graham Cluley, a security expert with Sophos, has warned that the now infamous worm known as Conficker C may be poised to strike infected computers around the world on April Fool’s Day (April 1st).
Conficker C, if you don’t already know, is a highly sophisticated worm that infiltrates a PC via specially written web pages or removable drives.
It then proceeds to hide on the target computer’s hard drive and does nothing much more than check various URLs, looking for updates.
Graham Cluley, however, believes that Conficker C is programmed ‘to hunt for new instructions on April 1′.
The Times also quotes him as saying,
‘this does not mean that anything is going to happen, or that the worm is actually going to do anything.
Simply, it is scheduled to hunt a wider range of websites for instructions on that date.’
As Confiker has yet to display its real intentions no-one is entirely sure what it has been programmed to do.
Back in February this year Cluley said -
‘It’s as if someone is assembling an army of computers around the world, but hasn’t yet decided where to point them.’
With April 1st being ‘one of those days’ because of the fools link, security experts are concerned that the millions of computers infected by Confiker may be signalled to commence some sort of attack or to flood the internet with email spam.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m just lucky I have Linux Ubuntu. Much safer than that windblows atrocity. I have used Ubuntu since its initial release and I have never had a virus, I don’t even have a firewall switched on!
Security advisors always said Conficker was simply going to update the way it receives updates on April 1. They didn’t say it would do anything else.
Security advisors already knew what was going to happen on April 1. However, the writer of Confiker has gone to a lot of trouble to protect this worm, even to the extent of writing it to confuse the Microsoft Update system into thinking that infected machines were patched against it.
That sounds like an awful lot of work just to con everyone on April Fools Day, don’t you think?
For sure they are planning something serious, and that, too, will come as an “update”, so there will be no warning.
Well, guess nothing happened after all.
I can’t help but think that this will be a damp squib and that everyone is fussing over nothing much.
That’s a very clever title!
Wow! I’m surprised that someone actually ‘got it’
I agree with that to a degree as the experts only ‘believe’ that Confiker will kick off on April 1st – there’s nothing to guarantee that it will.
Well, not yet…
I totally agree that Confiker remains a threat that is still waiting to happen.
We haven’t heard the last of it yet…
That is a very good point Karsul, I hope everyone has taken notice because Confiker will undoubtedly remain in the news for a while yet…
I’ve never had any issues with Windows but, then again, I know how to keep it running safely and securely.
I too have a Linux installation on a PC and have to admit that I have never had to do anything security-related in order to keep it running optimally.