ConFicker Virus?

[PRNelson]

My Dad was telling me today that he read in the paper about a new super virus that was going to be unleashed on the 1st April. Becuase of the date I'm not overly convinced, but wanted to check if anyone else knew anything about it?

[MikeHaggar]

Sort-of true:
http://gizmodo.com/5183751/giz-explains ... on-april-1

If you're an active user of a firewall, anti-virus and windows update, you're relatively safe though.

Edit: Oh, and it will only do 'something' with the already infected machines on April 1st. Might make the internet unstable, send out lots of spam or such when it does though.

Detailed info here:
http://www.bitdefender.com/VIRUS-100046 ... p.Gen.html

(If you can't access that page, then you have the virus)

[PRNelson]

Yeah, I can access that page!

[MikeHaggar]

There's a download for a removal tool on that page too, so if you want to be extra careful you could run that.

[meu02136]

Detailed info here:
http://www.bitdefender.com/VIRUS-100046 ... p.Gen.html

(If you can't access that page, then you have the virus)

I thought It was going to say I couldn't access that page, because Mike created the page as an elaborate April Fool's joke.

[Yamato-99]

Does anyone here think that this is just an april fools gag? Cause I certainly do.

[Sly Reflex]

Here are a few anagrams of Conficker.

• Cock Finer
  Cock Infer
  Crock Fine
  Force Nick
  Nice Frock
  Crick En Of
  Cock Fern I
  Cock Ref In
  Cock En Fir
  Cock Re Fin
  Crock Fen I
  Crock En If
  Rec Nick Of
  Rec Conk If

Some nice ones there, I was expecting this to be a joke tbh. A computer virus called Nice Frock would be awesome though.

[MikeHaggar]

There's a download for a removal tool on that page too, so if you want to be extra careful you could run that.

If you had the virus you wouldn't be able to view the page thus not be able to run the removal tool

scratches head

Nah. It sometimes block that page if you have the virus. Not all the time.

[djsmiley2k]

Yeah its a real virus, I've been.... watching its progress for around a month. Its very well known in the computing circles but no one knows yet what they plan to do with it (they being the hackers who created it).

Virui are very complicated these days, but basicly on the 1st april it will attempt to contact some sites (with cleverly generated urls) where it will recieve instructions on what to do "next".

Its quite funny really, last time anything like this hit properly that I recall was the Melissa virus which deleted peoples boot sectors causing their PC's not to boot up, that was a fair few years ago, other than that the biggest ones (red alert, sql slammer) have all just "broken" the internet in some form or another.

As virui have become more and more controlled by money, my bet would be it will do the whole "Go to this site and pay $10 to have this removed" which infact wont even remove it but just hide it so that they still have access if they want it. Such fun eh?

[Mangoverboard]

Best virus I ever heard of was one that changed everything you type into **** your mother.

I hope this ones inventive at least.

[Brooke]

I think Microsoft is offering too little for the hacker. If they really want him, they should offer more.

[djsmiley2k]

More info has appeared, some experts saying it wont do anything interesting, the date is just a timer for it to change the way it attempts to locate updates etc- However, knowing some hacker types... <Ahem>.... then I know how they love publicity and it wouldn't supprise me if they DO decide to now launch something due to the fact that everyone is expecting something.

Also the virus freely admits its on the computer if you do the right kind of scans over the network, so any system admins can now easily scan the network and see that computers 1,3 and 5 are infected, turn them off and wait to find out see what happens and then decide how to react (if they haven't just fixed it anyway).

[alistair_thomas]

My guess is that Skynet is finally becoming self aware...

[PRNelson]

[Yamato-99]

So did anyone here get infected?..