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Microsoft Hopes It Has a Winning Hand to Stop Conficker Worm

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Microsoft lays down four aces - but will they be a winning hand against Conficker?

 

The folks in Redmond are tired of hearing about the Conficker worm. Although Microsoft issued a patch back in October, Conficker's infected over 9 million PCs and crippled French and British military assets. Redmond's answer: a cool $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Conficker's creators.

And, that's not all Microsoft has up its sleeve.

  • Ace number two: it's formed a posse to help stop Conficker in its tracks. Members of the Microsoft posse include antivirus, domain name providers, and research organizations such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), VeriSign, NeuStar, CNNIC, Afilias, Public Internet Registry, Global Domains International, M1D Global, AOL, Symantec, F-Secure, ISC, Georgia Tech, the Shadowserver Foundation, Arbor Networks, and Support Intelligence.
  • Ace number three: a special Conficker website that provides more information about the Conficker (aka Downadup), including manual removal tools.

What's the fourth ace in Redmond's hand? You. If you are managing home or office systems that aren't yet protected against Conficker, get busy. Microsoft's Conficker website provides the links and tools you need to protect your PCs, but they don't work unless you use them.

Illustration by the author.
COMMENTS
avatarClean out those nasty little bugs.

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avatarWell

This is all nice and all, but is there a tool to check to see if you are infected with conficker? I've used my flash drive with my compters at school and they only get patched about once every 2 years. My computer isn't showing any symptoms, but can I really be sure I'm not infected? 

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The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

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avatarDetecting Conficker

Here's a link to a free Conficker detection program http://www.anti-spyware-101.com/remove-conficker. The vendor offers a paid removal tool, but other vendors offer free removal tools.

---------------------------------------------- 

It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.

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avatarSure hope they catch him,

Sure hope they catch him, and he makes a nice girlfriend to someone in federal prison.

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avatarWill Microsoft pay the

Will Microsoft pay the people responsible for Conficker if they turn themselves in? Hell if the reward is high enough I'll take responsibility for anything that doesn't have a prison sentence.

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avatarNo.

No.

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avatarFor damaging military

For damaging military property I think a jail sentence is warranted.

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avatarBSD?

 

I've been waiting for fully functional 64bit video drivers for over 2 years.  I assume you guys have them now?

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avatarDo I really have to do this

Do I really have to do this again?

 

www.openbsd.org

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