Conficker – The Most Wicked and Biggest Threat to Internet Security

Security firm F-Secure has declared Conficker worms as the biggest threat to the Internet security up till now in 2009.

Conficker is a traditional worm that is fully capable of exploiting the MS Windows vulnerabilities. F-Secure said that Conficker worm had been one of the leading worm having peer-to-peer functionality and heavy encryption. It is also able to modify and update itself.

Conficker emerged out as a severe threat at the starting of 2009 and reached its peak on April 1, 2009. Since then, security researchers have noted a copycat worm known as Neeris that has inherited some of the functionalities of Conficker.

According to Mikko Hyponnen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure, the creators of Conficker are skilled people. They could launch as wider attacks as they want, which is clear from the fact that they have infected millions of systems around the globe, as reported by ITPRO on April 8, 2009.

Apart from this, cyber crooks have begun attacking innocent users by exploiting social networking sites. This seems quite relevant in view of the fact that the second biggest risk in the first quarter of 2009 has been the "Koolface" worm that prevails on several social networking sites such as Facebook to steal the login details of the users.

According to security experts, the Koolface worm pierces into users' PCs and steals the e-mail addresses of their friends as well as their pictures. By exploiting users' photos on Facebook, it creates a bogus YouTube page. Then it sends an e-mail to the users' friends stating that they have been labeled in a YouTube video.

However there were increasing concerns about the probable reactivation of Conficker worm on April 1, 2009, but so far no fresh variant or additional Conficker-attacks have been detected, excluding those related to the already existing ones which were related to previously active versions of the worm.

Moreover, a report from Panda Security states that there are still very high chances of any of the URLs developed by Conficker getting activated at any instance; thereby, allowing the worm to download or update to its new malware or code. Whatever the case may be, the unprotected users would get affected as still there are a huge number of such users.

Related article: Conviction of First Felony Spam in Virginia Upheld

» SPAMfighter News - 4/11/2009