A Year Later, Conficker Can Cause Destruction over the Internet

Conficker hit the Web in 2009, and it has been almost a year. According to the security firm Symantec Corp., though the threat didn't prove to be as severe as it was capable to be, today also, the 6.5 Million PCs remain infected. Those compromised computers are contaminated with either the variant A or B, and continue to be very much susceptible to further attack from its various variants.

Conficker, which is one of the biggest botnets ever set up, created mayhem last year. A Conficker variant, on April 1 2009, was geared up to stir, specifically developed to start receiving update directions with possible outcomes being anybody's speculation.

However, at that time it did not work out. But now, a year later, numerous Conficker variants continue to be around and increasing, even though at a slow pace, and thereby leading to troubles for gullible Windows users.

Lately, the worm put Jason Howell, CNET TV associate producer at the SXSW Interactive show, into major troubles as he attempted to edit and publish the podcast of Buzz Out Loud.

It is reported that the worm must have been hiding out on a TriCaster video production device. This device was running Windows. When Howell attached a USB thumb drive into the TriCaster, a Window pop up showed up for just a second before going away. Howell then inserted the thumb drive into his office laptop. anti-virus software then warned him on the system that the worm was downloaded and placed on the thumb drive. It was after around three hours that the producer finally managed to upload the Buzz Out Loud program on the website of CNET.

Notably, as per the website of the Conficker Working Group, 6,298,318 computer systems are till date contaminated from 219 distinctive IP addresses.

However, according to the experts, even though latent, the botnet certainly poses a risk, but now, the situation is somewhat different due to the level of awareness raised by Conficker.

As stated by Warren Shiau, senior associate with The Strategic Counsel, whether or not the threat is actually realized is a different matter altogether, as it's known, and in general, it's difficult to capitalize a known infection, as reported by it World Canada on March 31, 2010.

Related article: A New "Blackmailing" Variant Creeps Around…

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