Conficker virus begins to attack PCs: experts (Conficker wakes up)

Roto-Reuters ^ | 4/24/09 | Jim Finkle

[Crazieman]

BOSTON (Reuters) - 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.

Its unidentified creators started using those machines for criminal purposes in recent weeks by loading more malicious software onto a small percentage of computers under their control, said Vincent Weafer, a vice president with Symantec Security Response, the research arm of the world's largest security software maker, Symantec Corp.

[basil]

Heads up!

[ansel12]

Here is the page for the conficker work group and their conficker repair tools.

http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=ANY.RepairTools

[eureka!]

Thanks. Mark and bump...

[ansel12]

For other people that join the thread, the test that will tell you if you have the conficker virus is on this page as well.

The test is instant (it takes literally one second).

Here is the page for the conficker work group and their conficker repair tools (and the test).

http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=ANY.RepairTools

[mreerm]

why don’t the good guys build a worm that takes out conficker?

[hoosierham]

I’m clean;keeping updated anti-virus and firewalls are necessary in online computing.

[berdie]

Thanks

[Ken H]

Do protection suites like McAfee (I have AVG) block and/or remove the conficker worm?

[khnyny]

bump for later

[doc11355]

Women and minorities hardest hit... Macs unaffected as usual

[hoosierham]

It a matter of percentages and best misuse of existing resources.

I bought a nice Mac G4 tower with Apple Studio LCD 15 for $100 last year from a l(probably)lesbian envormental,pro-choice,anti-war activist; she informed me it wouldn't hook up to DSL service and she preferred Windows computers.So the platform doesn't indicate the user's politics after all.Funny, my dsl hooked right up to the ethernet port!

[decimon]

Thanks. According to that, I’m conficker clean.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for posting.

[mysterio]

http://www.malwarebytes.org

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Viruses that turn PCs into slaves exploit weaknesses in Microsoft's Windows operating system. The Conficker worm is especially tricky because it can evade corporate firewalls by passing from an infected machine onto a USB memory stick, then onto another PC.

Running Linux browsers here....

[spacejunkie01]

I’ve got a new malware thing pc something...can’t get rid of it with Malwarebytes.

Not sure what to use.

[mysterio]

Weird, Malware bytes got rid of everything on my PC. Does AVG find the virus?

[Rebelbase]

I had a re-direct malware bug a couple weeks back and spent at least 7 hours trying to kill it with every spyware/anti virus out there. Best we could determine it was a rootkit virus. Even the rootkit revealer program wouldn't get rid of it. Ended up re-insalling XP.

[ansel12]

“I’ve got a new malware thing pc something...can’t get rid of it with Malwarebytes.”

---

What other scans have you tried?