Hey tribers,
Here’s the big virus warning we have at the federal level for April 1st they call it the conficker worm and here’s some info for ya, we actually found one on one of our hospital laptops that had remnants of this worm lying dormant waiting for the update, most pc’s at home shouldn’t have any major issues with it but if you have a personal laptop that you use at the office or put on a network, then you might want to be careful about opening strange files especially .vbs files
Have you heard about the Conficker worm? Were you around for the Code Red worm infection in 2001 that shut down part of the VA’s computer network?
A computer worm is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other computers on the network and it may do so without any user intervention. The Conficker worm can move from one computer to another without anyone having to do anything. And it keeps updating itself. Each version is more malicious than the last. The current version does the following:
• Deactivates Windows Security Center notifications
• Prevents restart in Safe Mode
• Disables Windows Defender
• Deletes all system restore points
• Disables various error-reporting and security services
• Terminates security-related processes
• Blocks access to security and Anti-Virus websites
• And of course attempts to replicate itself on unprotected or partially protected computers
By looking at the program, experts have been able to determine that it will send out a major update to all currently infected computers all over the world tomorrow, April 1, 2009. Bob Merchant, his staff, and the rest of the VA are currently involved in trying to make doubly sure that there are no infected computers on the VA network.
as long as you have current anti-virus software and practice basic security you should have no issues. When they start telling people to turn of their PC’s that’s just a form of socially engineered malware. It gets you to do the same thing they would try to do with a virus without them actually putting anything on your PC. Just by making you take your PC offline they’ve succeeded in disrupting people’s lives once again….sigh