THIS IS A HUGELY important issue that we tracked a few days ago. We already knew that almost 1 in 2 Windows PCs had become zombie PCs, but it keeps getting worse. According to this report, as many as one in three Windows PCs may have been occupied by one single worm in a matter of just days! That's how serious it is.
The computer worm responsible for the biggest attack in years has infected at least 1 out of every 16 PCs worldwide, a security company said Wednesday, and may have managed to compromise as many as nearly 1 in 3.
Strathclyde Fire and Rescue has said its IT network has "come under attack from a computer virus".
Windows worm trickery for Vista
The Conficker virus has opened a new can of worms for security experts.
Drives such as USB sticks infected with the virus trick users into installing the worm, according to researchers.
Comments
David Gerard
2009-01-22 14:50:13
(One story suggested in the headline it would affect Linux systems running Wine - which is a real concern, as Wine is good enough to run most worms - but the end of the story asked if anyone had seen Conficker running in Wine and could verify it actually did anything. ?!)
Roy Schestowitz
2009-01-22 15:27:13
David Gerard
2009-01-22 15:38:23
David Gerard
2009-01-22 15:39:07
Roy Schestowitz
2009-01-22 15:44:10
David Gerard
2009-01-22 20:25:41
http://network.itproportal.com/articles/2009/01/21/linux-windows-7-beta-could-be-hit-downadup-worm/
Page 1: "Furthermore, there are rumours that even Linux could be affected by the Worm if they run Wine, an application that allows Linux to execute programs written for the Windows environment. In theory, the virus would only affect the Windows partition rather than the whole operating system."
Page 2: "It would be great if someone could confirm the Linux rumours and Wine's autorun.inf capabilities."
i.e. we made up some rubbish to give a splash headline.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-01-22 20:30:00
Chef Could Murder Waiter
Page X: “It would be great if someone could confirm the chef cut the waiter and not onions.”
Yggdrasil
2009-04-01 00:18:14
Late January, UPI reported 15 million Conficker infections:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/01/25/Virus_strikes_15_million_PCs/UPI-19421232924206/
But the real nitty gritty from the article is here:
"Symantec noted on its blog last week that very few computers in North America had been infected, a trend which it attributed to the greater prevalence of legal and fully patched software."
In several other places on this site you note that there is no way to be safe with Windows, yet as the article shows, legitimate installed were not affected. Not only because security updates are downloaded, but since XP SP2 the Windows Firewall is enabled by default.
While you dispute the obscurity of Linux on the desktop, it's interesting to note that even popular distros like Ubuntu do NOT have a firewall enabled be default. This is unwise, regardless of how many countless security updates are installed.