Since its discovery last November, the Conficker Worm continues to infect computers and threatens the security of the Internet.
Conservative estimates say over five million computers are infected with Conficker. The botnet is so large that experts are saying it could be used to shut down entire countries. The worm takes advantage of a flaw in the Windows operating system to expand and grow.
Rodney Joffe, a director of the Conficker Working Group said, “The general agreement in the security world is that Conficker is the largest threat facing us from a cybercrime point of view. It has proven to be extremely resilient. It’s almost impossible to remove.”
He continued to say, “The best minds in the world have not managed to crack the code behind this yet.”
Conficker is so devious. It is unlike any computer worm that has been developed to date. It has built-in mechanisms to prevent people from scanning their computers with anti-virus software. Even those who completely erase everything on their computer and start over, if they back up any important data on a portable drive, the clean machine is reinfected when the drive is connected to the computer.
Even more alarming, you can disinfect all but one computer in a network and that one infected computer will begin to reinfect the others according to Joffe.
Conficker has the ability to spread automatically from computer to computer on a network. It infects PCs without the user doing anything other than turning the computer on.
The brightest minds in computer security have been stumped by Conficker. Joffe stated that Conficker has proven to be the gold standard for botnets. He said it is rock solid, it’s steady and it has the mechanisms built in that have made it impossible for us to actually crack.
The number of infected machines seems to be staying at around five million. They include home, business and Government computers.
Conficker continues to threaten the future of the Internet. The brightest minds in the industry are struggling to find a solution to this vicious worm.
It is up to all of us to lock down our computers and do everything we can to protect ourselves against this threat while experts are searching for a way to destroy this King sized worm
The best protection for individuals, families and small and mid-sized businesses against this kind of threat is to put a professional grade protection service on your computer. A service that maintains the security of the computer scanning and repairing any new threat that may appear on the computer with industrial grade software. The service should include unlimited tech support at no additional charge. That way there’s no concern about huge computer repair costs in the future.
