Conficker Still Seems Rock Strong

According to the latest warning issued by the security firm Kaspersky Lab, the menace of Conficker worm is still not over as the virus is found prevailing in the Philippines.

The firm reported that the Philippines is the fourth highest infected country in the Southeast Asia, with 126,594 infected systems. Malaysia, having 212,477 infected computers, has been reported as the topmost infected Southeast Asian region. Thailand and Indonesia acquired the third and fourth spots respectively with 165,080 and 164,794 infected computers in the same order.

As far as global rankings are concerned, Philippines ranks 19th whereas China is the leader with 2.6 Million infected systems. Brazil and Russia follow with 1 Million and 835,000 infected cases respectively.

Kaspersky Lab revealed that the large botnet constructed by the virus-infected computers facilitate cybercriminals to launch destructive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This way, criminals are able to steal personal and sensitive details from the systems of the individuals or from corporate networks. These attacks also allow them to circulate unsolicited spam e-mails.

Security experts informed that exact figures of the amount lost by businesses on account of the damages caused by Conficker worm cannot be calculated as the virus is still spreading at a substantial pace. Moreover, cybercriminals have devised more sophisticated techniques that make it extremely difficult to figure out the malwares like Conficker that steal confidential information from the users' PCs.

Expressing his views in this regard, Oscar V. Pineda, a network engineer at iSecureNetworks Inc, stated that there are times when IT officials happen to fail or forget to update the anti-virus software. This makes the companies fall victim of virus infections very easily, as reported by GMANews.TV on May 15, 2009.

He further added that the Kido/Conficker worm is so common that nearly 40% infections in the past few months were either generated by it or related to it. This particular virus has been designed to render the anti-virus software disabled and is of quick-proliferating nature.

Security experts urged the owners of PCs and IT administrators to take this matter seriously in order to stop the Conficker from infecting the PCs further. More importantly, Internet users should be vigilant, particularly while surfing the Internet and using flash drives and hard drives, and should timely update their anti-virus software.

Related article: Conviction of First Felony Spam in Virginia Upheld

» SPAMfighter News - 5/20/2009