Why Everyone Should Calm Down About Conficker


	Why Everyone Should Calm Down About Conficker

Andy Greenberg

3-26-2009 5:34 PM

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tags:

f-secure, conficker, cybersecurity, viruses, antivirus

Andy Greenberg says:

In this helpful Q&A about the Conficker worm, F-Secure once again proves that they'd rather tell the whole truth than scare more people into buying security software.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/a12dc73e-4cce-4d0e-b72e-baf838ea1b51/22061E30-A1CC-4FD0-B27C-32693B18F680/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001636.html" href="http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001636.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.f-secure.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001636.html"><B>Q:</B> I heard something <B>really bad</B> is going to happen on the Internet on April 1st! Will it?<BR /><DIV><B>A:</B> No, not really.</DIV><BR /><B>Q:</B> Seriously, the <B>Conficker worm</B> is going to do something bad on April 1st, right?<BR /><DIV><B>A:</B> The Conficker aka <B>Downadup</B> worm is going to change it's operation a bit, but that's <B>unlikely to cause anything visible on April 1st</B>.</DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001636.html"><B>:</B> So… this means that the attackers could use this download channel to run any program on all the machines?<BR /><DIV><B>A:</B> On all the machines that are infected with the latest version of the worm, yes.</DIV><BR /><B>Q:</B> But what's this peer-to-peer functionality I've heard about?<BR /><DIV><B>A:</B> The worm has some peer-to-peer functionality which means that infected computers can communicate with each other without the need for a server.</DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001636.html"><B>Q:</B> But doesn't that mean that if the bad guys wanted to run something on those machines, they don't need to wait for April 1st?<BR /><DIV><B>A:</B> Yes! Which is another reason why <B>it's unlikely anything major will happen on April 1st</B>.</DIV></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/22061E30-A1CC-4FD0-B27C-32693B18F680/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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