Infamous Conficker Coming Pre-loaded on Police Body Cameras

Geek.com reported on 16th November, 2015, quoting security vendor Florida IT security firm iPower which discovered the threat, as saying "One of the biggest security threats of the last decade is the infamous Conficker worm, which is trying hard to make a comeback by infecting police body cameras with the Conficker worm".

It is not great news for Martel, a company which takes great pride for providing gear to police departments since 1957, and boasts for supplying the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force.

Martel Frontline body cameras is tied to the chest of an officer's uniform; and captures stills, video and location data which are recorded to an internal drive. Data can be transferred from there to a computer through USB cable, or can be uploaded wirelessly to a remote PC or server.

Conficker was found waiting in the shadows on Martel Frontline body cameras by iPower. iPower did not give an exact count but confirmed that several cameras were infected.

Most Windows devices were mainly concerned about Conficker few years ago. It was believed that Conficker took advantage of a bug Microsoft which was patched in 2008 allowing a remote compromise of a vulnerable machine in the local-area-network.

A huge containment led by the working group of Conficker wanted to sinkhole the botnet and shut down a complex randomized domain-name scheme keeping its control system floated.

But the malware could still disseminate via spam and network shares even after this effort.

The second method is what iPower seems to have exposed Conficker doing after the body cam was connected to a PC, which caused detection from its antivirus software.

Unfortunately, a study that police cams containing Conficker are shipping is an evidence of intensity of the worm which is troubling because cameras are very important in criminal trials. If a lawyer can confirm that a camera is tainted with malware, then it is possible that the flaw could be the reason for the video it created to be tossed out of the court, or create judicious doubts for the judiciary. Tainted cameras can also damage and deficiently bog down the police forces networks as some of them still employ out-of-date computers with futile security measures.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/23/2015