So if you have never heard about a worm that is infecting round around the world, infecting millions and millions of computers. This is about one -- it is called the Conficker worm. Last report, a company called F-Secure estimated at least 9 million PCs have been infected with this and that's just up from like about 2.5 million in a very, very short time. Now Conficker is actually dealing in what is another worm called Downandup worm. But essentially, once the machine gets infected with this worm, it's downloaded, it gets installed and then it directly attacks or control the websites and it is just really bad there.
Microsoft released, the past last week, an update to their Malicious Software Removal Tool. If you haven't applied that, make sure you get it. The Internet Storm Center, which tracks viruses and infections, say that the Conficker worm can be spread in three different ways. First it attacks the vulnerability in the Microsoft Server Service and computers without the October patch can be remotely attacked and taken over.
Second, Conficker can attempt or guess administrator passwords used by local networks. Third, the warm infects removable devices in network shares with an auto-run file that spreads. It mostly come on USB devices and that sort of things. So make sure that you have got the latest security patches and it is probably a wise idea to disable auto-run on your work stations. That way if somebody sticks in it, a USB key or whatever, iPod or whatever, if that's too long there, just one automatically take off and start running and spreading this bad, bad one.
This is a big one; the real question is how dangerous the Conficker worm is. I have read that it may turn out to be more of a dud than anything else. It is certainly not a proof of concept type thing going on and this thing is really seriously. So you need to be prepared. So make sure that you get the latest Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool and make sure that you have got all of your patches up-to-date. I think it is just a good practice, you might want to consider disabling the auto-run on your workstations at the office.
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