Summary: Reasons to keep Windows out of the hospital; botnets without solution within sight

FOR QUITE SOME TIME NOW we have been keeping track of the effect of Conficker on (Windows in) hospitals. Here is a not-so-shocking new discovery that the number of affected hospitals cannot be disclosed.

The Conficker worm infected several hundred machines and critical medical equipment in an undisclosed number of U.S. hospitals recently, a security expert said on Thursday in a panel at the RSA security conference.

Some named hospitals have already been struck by Conficker. For example we have:

• New Casualties of Microsoft Windows?
• Death by Microsoft Windows
• US Army Becomes Zombies Army; London Hospitals Still Ill (Windows Viruses)
• Utah Has Novell, SCO, and... Conficker in the Hospitals

Will this ever end? That's highly doubtful. "The fight against botnets is largely ineffective," exclaims the headline of this new article from Heise.

Stewart believes that the cunningly decentralised peer-to-peer structure of the Whaledac and Conficker botnets is the result of the earlier conspicuous switching off of some C&C servers.

It is very irresponsible to use a platform that is so routinely hijacked simply because it's designed to permit intrusion. ⬆