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With April 1st just around the corner, you’ve probably already heard about the supposed danger of the Conficker virus triggering harmful activity on that date. But just in case you don’t know what the hullabaloo is all about, here’s a sample (from AP Technology writer Jordan Robertson):<\/p>\n
“The fast-moving Conficker computer worm, a scourge of the Internet that has infected at least 3 million PCs, is set to spring to life in a new way on Wednesday — April Fools’ Day. That’s when many of the poisoned machines will get more aggressive about “phoning home” to the worm’s creators over the Internet. When that happens, the bad guys behind the worm will be able to trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, clog networks with traffic, or try and bring down Web sites.”<\/p>\n
Following my own advice<\/a>, I decided to investigate further.<\/p>\n First stop, Snopes<\/strong>. The gist of what they said:<\/p>\n “Security researches say the reality is probably going to be more like what happened when the clocks on the world’s computers turned to January 1, 200, after lots of dire predictions about the so-called millennium bug. That is, not much at all.”<\/p>\n Next stop, Symantec<\/strong>, publisher of Norton anti-virus products.<\/p>\n “If you’re worried about the Conficker worm striking on April 1st, don’t be.”<\/p>\n In other words, the worm isn’t new. If you haven’t already been infected, that won’t change.<\/strong><\/p>\n Symantec continues:<\/p>\n ” On April 1st the Conficker worm will simply start taking more steps to protect itself. After that date, machines infected with the “C” variant of the worm may not be able to get security updates or patches from Microsoft and from many other vendors. The creators of the worm will also start using a communications system that is more difficult for security researchers to interrupt.”<\/p>\n To me, this means you shouldn’t have to worry, as long as your virus protection software is up to date before April 1. Please, (picture me on my knees begging you) if you don’t have anti-virus software installed on your PC, stop right now and go get some. This is your business we’re talking about protecting. You have lots of options for which software vendor to use. If you want a good, free product, I suggest AVG Free<\/a>.<\/p>\n Finally, this from PC World<\/strong> magazine, addressing the fear, uncertainty, and doubt.<\/p>\n “According to Joe Stewart, a security researcher at SecureWorks who knows what’s what when it comes to malware, ‘there will be no April 1st outbreak.’ Clean PCs won’t suddenly melt down from a new Conficker infection. Put another way, if you’re not infected on April 1st, nothing will happen to you. <\/p>\n If you are infected with Conficker, it will attempt to update itself. That update could theoretically<\/strong> (emphasis mine) contain instructions to do something drastic, like wiping out a hard drive, but that’s pretty unlikely. Conficker’s creators stand to gain nothing by such a destructive act, and malware these days is all about gain.”<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n Conventional wisdom holds true in this instance. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”<\/p>\n So, be alert, but don’t panic. Just make sure you have a good anti-virus program and that you keep it updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n With April 1st just around the corner, you’ve probably already heard about the supposed danger of the Conficker virus triggering harmful activity on that date. But just in case you don’t know what the hullabaloo is all about, here’s a sample (from AP Technology writer Jordan Robertson):<\/p>\n “The fast-moving Conficker computer worm, a scourge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","tve_updated_post":"","tve_custom_css":"","tve_user_custom_css":"","tve_globals":{},"tcb2_ready":0,"tcb_editor_enabled":0,"tve_landing_page":"","_tve_header":"","_tve_footer":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[150,141],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security-issues","tag-security","tag-virus","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}