April 1 Computer Worm

Fisher's Mom

Fisher's Mom

Mother Superior
I wanted to make sure everyone knows about this worm that is set to "activate" on April 1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker

This isn't like the other hoax things you hear about or a rumor about what hackers might do - it's a verified worm that is on hundreds of thousands of computers. Because of the nature of worms, and this one in particular, it is not clear what it will be used to do. Only that once "activated", it has the ability to hijack infected computers.

It targets Windows machines, I believe, so Macs and Linux users are presumably not at risk for this.

There is a great deal of free software available to detect and clean your computer. I know because I found it on one of my home computers a couple of months ago and several of my friends' computers. It is difficult to detect because it disables your anti-virus software in a way that might not be obvious to you, among other things. I cleaned my computer with Malwarebytes, a free tool, but there are many others.

Keltin, YT and all you other computer gurus, I would love your input and thoughts on keeping your system safe on April 1.
 
we've been dealing with conficker for months now, and it's getting worse. it's infected a number of nerd sticks, and every time one is inserted into a usb port, another system is infected.

we've all been authorized to scrub our usb drives a.s.a.p.

i had it, thought i'd gotten rid of it and had our m.i.s. boys install our corporate licensed mcafee, and got re-infected. so i did a sys backup, formatted my drive, and am reloading from scratch. :sad:

even with that, i'm physically pulling the lan from my system next tuesday, the 31st.
 
buckytom said:
we've been dealing with conficker for months now, and it's getting worse. it's infected a number of nerd sticks, and every time one is inserted into a usb port, another system is infected.

we've all been authorized to scrub our usb drives a.s.a.p.

i had it, thought i'd gotten rid of it and had our m.i.s. boys install our corporate licensed mcafee, and got re-infected. so i did a sys backup, formatted my drive, and am reloading from scratch. :sad:

even with that, i'm physically pulling the lan from my system next tuesday, the 31st.
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I'm so glad you brought that up, BT. That's actually how I think my computer was infected - a thumb drive. So we should all be careful with thumb drives, portable drives, etc. But I'm with you, BT, I will be offline on the 1st just for the hell of it.
 
So far mine is OK. I should double check my other laptops though. I keep mine up to date and always make sure my anti-virus, firewall, etc is up to date and on and scans are done regularly.
I have noticed, however, that others here seem to like to put the updates and scans off and then they never get done...:glare:
 
Thanks guys! I'm scanning my computer now to find out if I have it. Here's a link to a free scan: Windows Live. You have to use IE though, it won't work with firefox.
 
last I heard those responsible had been busted and action has been taken to minimise any damage that it could have caused.
 
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