Conficker starts firing around the world

Not opening a new frantic attack on the 1st of April as many people predicted, the Conficker worm is silently activated and slowly aimed at "lulling" users and security circles .

Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, has quietly turned thousands of personal computers into spam servers and installed spyware, said Vincent Weafer, Symantec's vice president of research.

" In the past few weeks, Conficker's author has started using his botnet network for illegal purposes. He (or them) has downloaded a lot of destructive software into slave computers. this process will take place slowly, for a long time, not frantically and quickly . "

Source: SecurityLabs Beginning to spread from the end of last year, Conficker has infected millions of computers worldwide and turned this PC into a zombie. A zombie army will form a botnet.

In the latest attack, Conficker has installed a second virus, Waledac, into the zombies. Waledac will cause the computer to automatically send spam that users do not know. In addition, Conficker also includes fake antispyware software on your PC.

" Waledac recruited PCs to a second Botnet network, which specializes in spam distribution. The botnet created by the virus could last for several years, " Weafer said.

The most sophisticated

" This is probably one of the most sophisticated botnets on the planet. It can be said, the brain behind Conficker is really professional. They know very well what they are doing, " said the researcher. senior Paul Ferguson of Trend Micro commented.

Also according to Ferguson's guess, Conficker has quietly installed a tool to distribute spam and other destructive software to tens of thousands of computers since April 7 here. " Conficker will stop installing malware on its botnet after 3/5, but there is no indication that this is the last attack ."

Last month, researchers feared that Conficker would be "monumental" on April 1, because it was programmed to "strengthen communications" on that day.

The security industry has set up a task force to fight Conficker, while also ringing a warning bell about its danger, causing the author Conficker to panic. However, attempts to purge origin or eradicate this worm so far have not been successful.

Conficker turns PCs into slaves by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system. It can sneak into your computer via the Internet or USB drive, preventing users from accessing secure websites to download the latest anti-virus version.