The latest version of a worm out there called Conficker or Downadup, is sceduled to do something on 4/1/2009. What it's going to do is anyone's guess. It could be harmless, or not.
Conficker is a very complex and sophisticated worm. It's latest version (C) has stealth capabilities, and it disables Windows Update and the Windows Security Center as part of its behavior.
There are ways to beat this bad-boy. First, many antivirus manufacturers say they can still detect it, so make sure your A/V is up to date and do a scan of your entire system. Maybe try it in safe mode.Also, the way Conficker knows what to do is by "calling home" to several algorithmically determined web servers. Since the web addresses are generated by the same algorithm, the professionals in the IT world have identified all of them from the A and B versions. These bad DNS names can then be blocked at the DNS level. (DNS is like the phone book of the Internet. It's where your computer looks up the numerical address for a human-friendly computer name.). OpenDNS.com is a DNS provider that will block Conficker's known destinations, so configuring your computer to use this free DNS service is a great step in defeating the worm.
Of course, it wouldn't be a bad idea to backup your personal files and documents, etc. Put them on removable media like a Flash drive or USB hard drive, and put it somewhere safe.
Start doing backups regularly if you don't already, and do it before the first.
Links:
PC Magazine article
CNN Story
Wikipedia Article
No comments:
Post a Comment