Will the Internet survive Conficker?

The Conficker worm - also known as Downandup, Kido, and Downup - has become a serious threat on the Internet in the last several months. Microsoft is offering a reward of $250,000 if you find the creator, and Internet security professionals have been scrambling to keep up. Conficker.A was pretty bad, then Conficker.B infected over 1 million computers in 24 hours. Now there is a third, even more robust version, called Conficker.C, which does not focus as much on spreading itself, but significantly increases the worm's hold on an infected system.

Here is what the Internet security community knows about what Conficker does and how it interacts:

• Conficker supposedly does not spread through downloading or email, but installs itself when you plug in a USB drive or insert a CD, and it can even hack your whole network using brute force password cracking (especially if you have weak passwords). So if one system on your network is missing security updates, all networked computers could be compromised.


• Conficker disables system services and antivirus, and adds services to listen for traffic.


• Conficker pings common sites to test for Internet connectivity, gets the date from search engines, and gets your IP address using online tools.


• Conficker can lockout accounts, change user settings, and send user information out over the Internet.


• Conficker.B and Conficker.C can also block access to Windows Updates, antivirus websites, and many removal tools


• Conficker has the ability to download new code and update itself.

Conficker's signature move is downloading updated code - not the first worm to do this, sure, but certainly the most effective so far. The worm randomly connects to one of several domains and tries to receive instructions. Conficker.B could connect to 32 domains out of a list of 500. Now we have Conficker.C that can connect to 500 random domains out of a list of millions. Conficker's download dates that I've seen referenced are March 8, March 13, March 18, and March 31. Supposedly, Conficker.C will initiate another attack sequence on April 1 - please ensure you are patched by that date.

Conficker Cleaning and Removal

Download the Microsoft patch at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007 and then do the steps here

Bitdefender has released a removal tool that can remove Conficker versions Conficker.A and Conficker.B, but may not remove Conficker.C. Download and run BitDefender's removal tool to check for and try to remove Conficker.

Symptoms of a machine or network infected with Conficker*:

*Please note you may be infected even if no symptoms appear.

• 1. You are unable to install Windows Updates


• 2. You are unable to view security websites or download antivirus and anti-malware products


• 3. It takes a long time to log in to your computer.


• 4. You see strange popups or programs running.


• 5. Unusual entries in Task Manager, Services, Event Viewer, %Windir%\System32, or the registry


• 6. Strange network traffic, especially relating to network logins by administrator accounts

Conficker may be a decoy?

In case the existence of this worm is not bad enough for sysadmins and IT professionals everywhere, some Internet security professionals think that this whole mess might just be a distraction for a much more serious attack. Until recently, most security professionals assumed that the end-game for Conficker was just another botnet - a network of computers under a hacker's control. However, “We think this is a wide-scale distraction to hide data breaches,” said Ryan Sherstobitoff, chief corporate evangelist for Panda Security. “It does not appear in the variants of Conficker that they are building a botnet, but that wouldn’t surprise us, either. This is an attack we have not seen in some time and is certainly a warning sign for something more to come.”

I agree that this is likely a distraction for a major Internet attack - think about the possibilities. It's April fool's day, they could even send out a link that says "This is a virus" to everyone's contact list and they would still get a bunch of clicks. Network admins would be slow to react to the flood of "server down" notices also. And your customers might not feel the need to let you know that your website now just displays Lolcats (and spreads malware).

Please get the word out about this problem - share this article (using ShareThis below), blog or write about this on your website, talk about it in forums, and tell your friends. Update Windows systems (or switch to Linux), update your Antivirus and anti-malware (you do have both, right?), use strong passwords, and read Internet security news sites regularly.

Links:

• Conficker Technical details from CA


• Conficker.B infected 1.1 million in 24 hours - Ars Technica


• Conficker download schedule - PC Mag


• Cleaning Conficker - Keeping Your Network Safe From Windows Worm


• Conficker attack April 1 - eWeek


• Not all tools remove all versions of Conficker - Heise.de
• Microsoft offers $250,000 to catch creator of Conficker


• Conficker update 2 - The Tech Herald


• Kaspersky and OpenDNS team up against Conficker

What do you think - will the Internet survive Conficker?

"Will the Internet survive Conficker?" continued here...

State of The Internet: 3.7.09

Here's what happened behind the scenes of The Internet recently, while you weren't looking. Yes, it's important.

IBM not so sure about open source anymore. Nobody has any money, of course they won't take our free products! Hope this doesn't keep up, or tech might have a "financial-style" rude awakening about the importance of customers vs. profit.

Microsoft will let you disable IE (only if you're absolutely sure) - no word on whether one day we can also disable "Slow", "Blue Screen" or Vista's trick of pinging the Department of Homeland Security. Move along, no glaring irony to see here.

Facebook a little red in the face after realizing that people aren't quite as dumb as they thought. Time to get a smarter lawyer. Or dumber customers.

Foreclosure scams on the rise. In other news, you probably won the lottery at least 4 times this week - go check your email! Make sure to write the tracking code "ID10T" legibly on the envelope containing all of your assets.

Britain printing paper money - good thing nobody remembers the time when money had to have something of value to back it

How to think what nobody else thinks

Managers buy out company instead of letting it go bankrupt. If only there were a group of people at GM, Bank of America, or Circuit City that had enough cash laying around to do something similar.... But clearly large companies haven't been paying their top people enough over the last several decades.

Company gives $9 million to its employees. Wait, I thought "The Economy" had all the money and that's why we can't have any? It really is just the scumbags at the top?

Schwarzenegger is still very sensible and intelligent - it's too bad everyone thinks he's just a big dumb jock.

We might have a shot at efficient solar cells after all. Realistically, the military will get exclusive use this technology so we can have invisible killing machines instead.

Microsoft is a little slow.That's ok, they have a lot of money, and it's their free country we live in so we all need to adjust to the lowest common denominator. Seems to be the norm these days.

These "scientists" are going to try to make a real live dinosaur. Want to guess who's money their using? And we all wonder why "The Economy" has collapsed (here's a hint - it's NOT the banks fault people can't read, make decisions, or do math)...

Please visit Fark if you want to survive the chaos. Remember - information is more powerful than greed, now we just need more people to have the first than the latter!

"State of The Internet: 3.7.09" continued here...