Conficker Infection Probably on 4% of Computers, says IBM

Although the release of Conficker.C on April 1, 2009 appeared to have hardly affected the security of networks, IBM said on April 2, 2009 that it detected the variant's infections on 4% of the Internet Protocol addresses it scanned. This implies the virus' prevalence was far greater than what was originally thought.

The Internet Security Systems (ISS) Division of IBM state that it scanned 2 Million computers to trace the virus' spreads. Reportedly, the malware had started spreading since October 2008 to reach its present third generation.

During the scan, IBM found that 37,000 distinct IP addresses were infected with the Conficker.C variant, and by April 1, 2009, there had been a 71% increase in the same to a count of 64,000.

Furthermore, the ISS division stated that despite Conficker, also referred to as Downadup, is the worst virus onslaught on the Internet in past few years, the division is still shocked with its scan results.

ISS Threat Response Manager, Holly Stewart, says that the number of infected IP addresses is much more than what the division anticipated. According to him, he thought that the rate would have been only 1-2%, as reported by PC ADVISOR on April 3, 2009.

Further, the findings are the same to the numbers OpenDNS released on April 1, 2009. OpenDNS stated that it too detected a far greater count of infections compared to what it anticipated. Both OpenDNS and IBM that counted the number of Conficker.C infections said the variant is easily detected when it performs interactions on the computer network.

Meanwhile, Danny McPherson, Chief Security Officer, Arbor Networks, says that probably Conficker infections are tending to reach the 4% mark, as reported by PCWORLD on April 2, 2009. McPherson said since Conficker usually infects particular kinds of users such as consumers who are more vulnerable to the worm than government or business users, estimates so far are likely from a specimen that doesn't symbolize the Internet in totality.

Nevertheless, Conficker is a huge problem. According to McPherson, even if the rate of infections is not high, the total number of infected systems is enormous.

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» SPAMfighter News - 4/11/2009