You might recall that back in October I advised you to download an emergency patch from Microsoft so that you can protect yourself from a rather nasty worm that is making the rounds. Well if you haven’t done it by now, you should do so ASAP. CNN is reporting that the Downadup or Conficker worm has infected eight million PCs and counting:
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at anti-virus firm F-Secure, says while the purpose of the worm is unclear, its unique “phone home” design, linking back to its point of origin, means it can receive further orders to wreak havoc.
He said his company had reverse-engineered its program, which they suspected of originating in Ukraine, and is using the call-back mechanism to monitor an exponential infection rate, despite Microsoft’s issuing of a patch to fix the bug.
“On Tuesday there were 2.5 million, on Wednesday 3.5 million and today [Friday], eight million,” he told CNN. “It’s getting worse, not better.”
So to protect yourself, you shou run and not walk to Windows update and make sure you’ve got all the latest patches installed. Or just simply go to this link to download the one patch that stops this issue. Of course running up to date anti-virus software can help as well.
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This entry was posted on January 19, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Eight Million PC’s Affected By Dangerous Worm…. Oh My!
You might recall that back in October I advised you to download an emergency patch from Microsoft so that you can protect yourself from a rather nasty worm that is making the rounds. Well if you haven’t done it by now, you should do so ASAP. CNN is reporting that the Downadup or Conficker worm has infected eight million PCs and counting:
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at anti-virus firm F-Secure, says while the purpose of the worm is unclear, its unique “phone home” design, linking back to its point of origin, means it can receive further orders to wreak havoc.
He said his company had reverse-engineered its program, which they suspected of originating in Ukraine, and is using the call-back mechanism to monitor an exponential infection rate, despite Microsoft’s issuing of a patch to fix the bug.
“On Tuesday there were 2.5 million, on Wednesday 3.5 million and today [Friday], eight million,” he told CNN. “It’s getting worse, not better.”
So to protect yourself, you shou run and not walk to Windows update and make sure you’ve got all the latest patches installed. Or just simply go to this link to download the one patch that stops this issue. Of course running up to date anti-virus software can help as well.
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This entry was posted on January 19, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.