Conficker Worm April 1st - Much Ado About Nothing

If you believe the news lately, the world is coming to an end because of the dreaded Conficker worm that "activates" in about 25 minutes.

I hate it when "journalists" sensationalize things for ratings.  "15 Million Computers have been infected already" - um, yes, by some counts it had infected 15 Million computers at one point, but now that is down to about 1 or 2 million because most systems are now patched.  Also, it has mostly affected computers in Asia in Europe, only 6% of the infections are in the USA.  Let's put it this way - I see a LOT of viruses, malware, etc - and I run in circles with people who do this stuff for a living as well, and neither I nor any of my colleagues have even seen a computer infected with Conficker yet, and it has been around since October of last year.

Besides, all Conficker is set to do on April 1st is change the way it communicates - it isn't supposed to release some huge payload wiping out the Internet - at most it is just making itself harder to track down.

One thing for sure, it has sure brought the website of "The Conficker Working Group" to its knees - poor guys, turns out publicity was the virus they should've been worried about (having said that, I applaud them for getting together to defeat this worm - I just have a problem with the way the media is handling it).

Also, if you are surfing the Internet and you get a pop-up that says "YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH CONFICKER - PROTECT YOURSELF BY DOWNLOADING OUR PROGRAM" - or something to that affect - PLEASE IGNORE IT.  Lots of scammers are preying on ignorant people and spreading their own malware disguised as conficker removal tools.

Just practice the techniques mentioned here:

https://members.gosuto.com/forums/index.php?topic=9.msg9#msg9

And you'll likely be ok.

By the way, it has been April 1st in many countries for some time now and guess what - nothing earth-shattering has happened yet.

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