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3/13/2009
09:59 PM
George V. Hulme
George V. Hulme
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No Fooling: Conficker Set To Strike April 1

Almost two months ago, we noted how antivirus firm F-Secure estimated that the Conficker/Downadup worm had infected nearly 9 million PCs. Today, IT management vendor CA warns that the worm has big plans for April Fools' Day.

Almost two months ago, we noted how antivirus firm F-Secure estimated that the Conficker/Downadup worm had infected nearly 9 million PCs. Today, IT management vendor CA warns that the worm has big plans for April Fools' Day.CA Security reports in this advisory that a new version the Conficker/Downadup worm (official name: Win32/Conficker.C) will attempt to randomly generate 50,000 URLs a day and report back to any one of 500 of them.

The idea is to make it nearly impossible for the URLs to be shut down in time, and reduce the odds of any of the servers it needs to connect to transmit or access data is available. It'll also threaten to make straightforward URL blocking/filtering defenses useless, if not much less effective. We'll see how well the new Conficker works. Hopefully, it doesn't.

This new variant also makes attempts at removing security tools designed to spot and eliminate this critter.

Integrator and security software maker Enigma Software Group has published a free Conficker removal tool, demonstrated in the video below.

The Conficker removal tool can be downloaded from this Web page.

I don't have a Windows virtual machine readied to try this tool. So if you've used it, please drop a note and let us know how well it's worked.

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