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CAUTION BEWARE OF POSSIBLE VIRUS ON APRIL 1st

  • Thread starter Dangerous Incorporated
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Dangerous Incorporated

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All computer users BEWARE. The Conficker C virus is on the loose as it is expected to damage millions of computers on April Fool’s Day. I hope everyone does take it seriously as this is not a joke. Security experts are on the run to search for the worm and disinfect it before it does mass damage.


Researchers have named the worm Conficker Cabal as they start the search for hunting it down. All members of the anti-worm society are trying to hunt it down as well as to find a solution to control the damage, if they are not able to stop the virus from spreading. It has been reported that on April 1, a super computer would have control of all the infected machines.

Microsoft have put up a bounty of $250,000 for the members if they find the author and the worm before damage is done, due to which all the members are working day and night, looking for the developer of the worm as well as the virus.

Microsoft earlier released figures that the worm had already infected around 10 million computers worlwide.Â

It is believed that the virus would be able to delete all of the files on the computer or get the complete control of the person’s computer or even monitor a person’s keyboard strokes to collect private information such as passwords, bank account information, or even credit card details. It has also been told by experts that the virus would try to get computer users buy fake software or spend money on other phony products.

An expert told that hackers these days dont try to mess with the machines, instead they are looking for ways in which money is involved. Someway or the other, they would be able to spend users money on fake things.

The best way to determine that you are infected or not is to check whether your windows made an automatic update in march, if YES, then your computer is doing pretty well. Also to be noted is that your antivirus is up to date. The Conficker C virus also disables the antivirus software to update
 
I have it on good authority that this is no joke so as long as you have your latest Windows updates, you wont have anything to worry about.
 
I think this is an april fools joke, so just to rebel against it I'm going to remove all anti virus software and firewalls from my compueter!!!


FIGHT THE POWER!!!
 
if anybody says 'april fools day' when this is all over, i'll be searching for their address.:D
 
scottishMJdude said:
Yes I'm on a computer but I have no idea how to use the thing!!!
Click to expand...

aww dont worry many of us dont i have a degree in the damn things and still get lost in all the microchips of the computer to me they are like learning a new language

after the summer im due to do a course on how to build one god help me :lol:
i dont think my invention will sell well

any names for my new invention will highly be appriciated

like crapo computers :lol:

i like the Dell laptops tho i have one but it kept shutting down in the middle of me talking to friends and watching videos answering emails etc so yesterday i called them and said id had enough and luckily enough the guy on the other end of the phone said something aint right lets have it in and fix it for you so hopefully all being well in 7 days my laptop will be fine again and i can catch up with friends that were unfortunate to talk to me when it shut down all the time

i wouldnt worry about your computer knowledge just stay safe make sure you have anti virus software and everything should be okay
 
Its April 1st here in Oz and the world didnt end! Phew!
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(CNN) -- Experts watched warily Wednesday as a worm infecting millions of computers activated itself as predicted on April 1.

Computer users will not know that Conficker.c has infected their machine.

However fears the Conficker.c worm would cause chaos have so far proved unfounded, with no reports of major problems.

"As long as you've patched or at least brought your antivirus software up to speed, you should be fine," said Chris Pirillo, a tech expert for CNN.com.

And there are plenty of anti-virus software packages available.

"I believe just about everybody out there," Pirillo said, "has a removal tool."

Still, the worm could cause problems, he said.

Unlike viruses, worms self propagate, spreading by networks. "Once it's out there, it's very difficult to stop," Pirillo said.

He predicted that "the worst possible outcome" would be that some computers would run "suboptimally," as network traffic becomes clogged.

And its ability to do that is cleverly designed: Conficker.c has a feature that disables the Windows update program in the Microsoft product, keeping Windows from becoming patched, Pirillo said. It also disables the auto-update capabilities of many anti-virus software programs.

Pirillo said it may be a week or more before the true impact of the worm is known, but he predicted it will have one.

"It's going to be very annoying to say the least," he said. "It's going to impact network traffic."

Lawrence Baldwin, the chief forensics officer with mynetwatchman.com, an Internet security site based in Atlanta, said the motivations of Conficker.c designers appear to be different from the those who designed previous worms, which infected millions of computers but had little impact.

"Three or four or five years ago, they were plainly trying to prove how smart they were," he said. Now, he said, the designers' motivation appears to be financial. "They can make serious amounts of cash with a variety of means."

Still, he predicted, any damage will be limited. "I don't suspect that we're going to have any kind of global meltdown as a result of this thing. I think what we'll see is that the purpose and intent of Conflicker is to deploy a whole plethora of secondary malware -- spam, Trojans, key loggers, distributed denial-of-service attacks, adware, etcetera, etcetera. Basically, all the things that the criminal can make money with."

Widespread media coverage of the threat may have motivated many individuals and corporations to act, possibly minimizing the potential impact.

But just what is that threat? Computer experts acknowledged they don't know for sure. "The biggest question is what is actually going to happen?" said Simit Shah, director of Web operations for CNN.com.

So far, the worm "kind of calls home and says, 'What should I do?'" he said. And so far, the response has been to do nothing, he said.

But on Wednesday, the worm is expected to expand its daily call list from a set list of 250 sites to 500 Web sites chosen at random from 50,000, "so it becomes harder to continue using some of the countermeasures that have worked so far," he said.

The worm "could end up connecting to one of these sites and say, 'Go do something,'" he said. That "something" could wind up being any of a number of different kinds of attacks on any of a number of Web sites, including government ones, he said.

He said the worm already controls more than 10 million computers by some estimates and is very sophisticated. "If someone says, 'I want to try to hack some system and try millions of combinations of Social Security numbers,' they could purchase this computing power to do that," Shah said.

In February, security experts' efforts to fight back got a boost when Microsoft offered a $250,000 reward to anyone who could catch the worm authors.

That resulted in the formation of Conficker Cabal, a group of security experts trying to combat the worm.

Despite the worm's potential for causing damage, its still-unknown authors have earned "a lot of respect" from the security experts, Shah said.

"These guys are doing stuff you don't normally see done," he said.

One of the first things it does is to disable a computer's automatic updates, he said. In October, Microsoft released a patch to fix this vulnerability, but many computer users have not updated yet. And, "once you get the worm, it disables your ability to update," Shah said.
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Mac users are in luck, since the worm is designed solely to exploit Microsoft software.

"A Mac is not impervious to nasties," Pirillo said. "It's just that the tallest nail always gets pounded, and right now Windows is the tallest nail."
 
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