There has been high concern over the “conficker worm” affecting computers and going into overdrive on April 1st. One of many media websites suggest that if you want to know whether your computer has been infected, try to load any Microsoft website in your browser. Apparently, the worm will not allow internet browsers to load any Microsoft owned websites, which ironically offer the software to rid your computer of this worm for free. If you have been infected and can not pull up the Microsoft website, try asking a friend to download the removal tool for you and have them email it to your account so you can load it that way.
This virus is real and computer users need to check for it since it does not require human interaction to spread this virus and most computer users won’t know that they are infected unless they first check for it. The official website for PC World has stated that millions of PC’s have been infected. This virus can be used to steal passwords and remote control software on your computer. The website has also shown this virus to spread in 3 ways as quoted below:

First, it attacks a vulnerability in the Microsoft Server service. Computers without the October patch can be remotely attacked and taken over.

Second, Conficker can attempt to guess or ‘brute force’ Administrator passwords used by local networks and spread through network shares.

And third, the worm infects removable devices and network shares with an autorun file that executes as soon as a USB drive or other infected device is connected to a victim PC.

This virus is more dangerous for business networked computers than for home computers that have firewalls. However, if employees access their business network from a home computer than they can still be infected.

Be sure to have someone email the Microsoft patch to you to stop this virus from spreading and from damaging your own computer. Internet research can provide you with more tips and news as this worm progresses over the next few days.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 7:34 am and is filed under Articles Concerning Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.