Conficker Penetrating Nearly 50,000 Computers Every Day

According to security researchers at Symantec, the computer worm, Conficker, is still infecting systems worldwide at fast rate and will continue to infect computers of Fortune 1000 companies (top global companies).

After thorough analysis of the worm, researchers have concluded that it infects nearly 50,000 new computers every day, with Brazil, the US and India are the hardest hit countries. Researchers also add that the hype created by media about Conficker/Downadup has almost vanished, but the worm is still propagating worldwide.

Conficker started spreading in the ending months of 2008 by exploiting the patched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows operating system to the complete networks. The worm also used the vector of removable storage devices to propagate from one system to another system. Security experts believe that it has entered millions of computers worldwide that collectively build the biggest botnet network.

Rick Wesson, a Member of the Conficker Working Group and CEO of Support Intelligence, said that companies invested millions of dollars on buying security equipments and prepared themselves to face the challenge. Despite this, the worm entered the networks of the Fortune companies and had been staying there for a very long time, as reported by ComputerWorld on May 20, 2009.

He further added that preventing the worm from entering the network required a lot of expense. When the Fortune companies could not block it, how could smaller companies stop it.

The Conficker Working Group has established sinkhole servers that communicate with infected computers. The Group has identified networks of many top organizations infected by it, even Microsoft fails to prevent the infection from spreading.

Besides, there was huge media hype about the worm in March 2009. While the media hype is almost subsided, it isn't vanishing from the threat landscape. Some people were expecting that propagation method of Conficker would change after April 1, 2009 and new round of attacks would emerge. In reality, the Conficker infected networks were minimal used.

Andre DiMino, another member of the Working Group and Co-founder of the Shadowserver Foundation, states that although the botnet hasn't done anything significance, it is still significant, as reported by ComputerWorld on May 20, 2009.

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» SPAMfighter News - 5/23/2009