Conficker Worm Shuts Down French and UK Air Forces
Posted 02/10/09 at 09:51:47 PM by Mark Edward Soper
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The London Telegraph reports that the Conficker (aka Downadup and Kido) worm virtually shut down both the French naval air force and Great Britain's RAF and Royal Navy for some time last month.
Ironically, the French had been warned as far back as October to harden their systems, but as we reported last month, millions of PCs haven't yet been protected by installing KB958644. As with other infections, the culprit appears to have been an infected USB flash memory key, and the infection prevented the French Navy's Rafael multi-role combat aircraft from being flown for several days in mid-January. The non-secured Intramar French navy computer network was also infected - users of Intramar were even told not to use their PCs!
Across the English Channel, the British were having problems of their own with a variant of Conficker. The Fujitsu-supplied NavyStar (N*) email and computer support system was the target of the outbreak. More than 24 RAF bases and 75% of the Royal Navy fleet, including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, were infected by Conficker.
Any idea why the IT managers forgot to protect their systems? What about the possibility that an attack like this could be the first wave of a major war? Hit Comment and tell us what you think (or fear).
French Naval Aviation and RAF roundels courtesy Wikimedia Commons. USB flash drives image courtesy BBC.
come on it's only the
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 9:24pm
come on it's only the French.. Who cares? I'm sure it was just a fluke that it hit the Royal Navy. I would like to believe that the Royal Navy is smarter than that to leave any of their computers running without a firewall and without antivirus software. Norton Internet Security 2009 Rule Britania edition.
Blindly Going Where many
Submitted by whathuhitwasntme on Sat, 02/14/2009 - 7:25am
Blindly Going Where many have gone before but often failing to read the directions!
So, since this took out part of the French military, did it interfere with their ability to surrender? Honestly, that's what they do best.
Easy exploits
Submitted by Cache on Wed, 02/11/2009 - 1:18pm
The #1 reason worms propogate as easily as they do is bad coding, but the #2 reason? Human beings. They did not update, maintain, or fundimentally protect themselves against a problem with a known solution. Human complacency guarantees that events like this will occur in the future.
Orange Book
Submitted by Bender2000 on Wed, 02/11/2009 - 6:55am
You'd think milspec systems would at least adhere to the outdated Orange Book suggestions, something only NT BARELY registered in. Now that cloud computing is back in vogue we can go back to the mainframe model and UNIX!
Le sigh
Submitted by Saltboy on Wed, 02/11/2009 - 5:38am
To all of you lauding the greatness of linux....I garauntee you that there would be just as many worms/viruses/tojans available on linux if it had 90% of the market as well.
If it can be coded, it can be uncoded.
Times like this...
Submitted by AntiHero on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 9:53pm
...make me wish the ALC889 HD Audio Realtek drivers worked on Linux....i'd lay low on my linux partition for the time being.
Submitted by pcfxer on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 6:02pm
OSS didn't work?
Conficker? Whats that?
Submitted by MAXPCreader07 on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 9:01pm
Conficker? Whats that? *stares at Linux box*
Submitted by linkmaster6 on Wed, 02/11/2009 - 5:06am
real ga-mes? wats that?
It's always too late.
Submitted by maniacm0nk3y on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 8:31pm
For ANYTHING, it's always too late. People just wait for the problem, and never find the solution or get it until time has passed and losses are made. Do people ever learn?
Submitted by pcfxer on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 8:20pm
*Sigh* www.openbsd.org
Submitted by Vegan on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 10:12pm
You give government competency too much credit if you think thousands of employees can just up and learn a new OS for vital daily use.
Shit happens on Windows, yes, but people know how to use it for the most part.
Submitted by pcfxer on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 6:01pm
You are 100% right, I work at the Revenue Agency for Canada and it is just a techie-gasm that would result in an OS change.
That said, there are some moves to Solaris that I enjoy to see but the main stuff is IBM mainframe and well, any UNIX/Linux variant will not even touch the compatability of IBM Mainframes.
Submitted by mlee19 on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 8:18pm
there's a billion dollar whopsy lol
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