Conficker Virus Excessively Infecting Indian Computers

Various security agencies report that the malicious worm Conficker is currently attacking a large number of Indian PCs, to quietly turn them into spam bots as well as to load spyware on them.

A research by Symantec has revealed that India ranks high among the nations that are severely hit by Conficker. This is attributed to the country's rampant use of P2P file sharing applications, inadequate knowledge about the necessity of updating antivirus programs and the widespread use of fake or pirated software.

Shantanu Ghosh, Vice-President of India Product Operations, Symantec India, states that India is one of the top ten nations affected by Conficker, as reported by CIOL on May 11, 2009. According to Mr. Ghosh, although it is not possible to count the number of affected computers, but they definitely count to some thousands.

Further, there is a tremendous increase in the number of Conficker attacks, and India is placed fourth in terms of the total infections globally, said Govind Rammurthy, CEO of Micro World, as reported by CIOL on May 11, 2009.

Moreover, China along with India too has a large number of Conficker infected PCs. The hazard here has grown even more due to the virus' constant mutation to fresh variants and numerous organizations and SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses) haven't still mended their systems via the installation of a security patch released by Microsoft in October 2008.

Over the past few weeks, the creators of Conficker have begun planting additional malware on the PCs that are subject to their control, according to security experts.

The Conficker virus installs another virus, called Waledac, which pushes out spam from the infected computer while its owner remains unaware of it. Further, the Conficker makes another impact that pertains to the unexpected excess of bogus anti-spyware on the Internet. If any of these anti-spyware is downloaded, it either infects PCs with malware or push a worthless application that users end up buying.

However, security researchers at Micro World think that it is still possible to contain Conficker i.e., by updating the Windows OS along with the patches for the antivirus as well as by deactivating the Autorun utility.

Related article: Conviction of First Felony Spam in Virginia Upheld

» SPAMfighter News - 5/18/2009