SciTech Shark – Science & Technology News Reviewer

Countdown to Conficker superworm activation

Posted on 23. Jan, 2009 by SciTech Shark in Security, Software, Web

Security watchers are bracing themselves to respond to the activitation of the huge botnet created by the Conficker superworm.

The malware has created a network of infected PCs under its control estimated at 9m or even more, according to the latest estimates – dwarfing the zombie army created by the infamous Storm worm, which reached a comparatively paltry 1m at its peak in September 2007.

Variants of Conficker (aka Downadup), which began circulating in late November, exploit the MS08-067 vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows server service addressed by Redmond with an out-of-sequence patch last October.

In the case of Conficker, security watchers reckon the fact that the worm only needs to hit one infected machine in a network to spread goes a long way towards explaining its success. Slow patching, particularly in corporates, has also contributed to the epidemic.  More…

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Tags: botnet, Conficker, Downadup, malware, microsoft, Security, superworm, virus, windows