is conficker the new yrk bug? for real or a joke?

[malcolm]

eveyrone's buzzing about this new virus called the conficker virus which is supposed to go active tonight at midnight but noone really knwos what exactly it's going to do, not even "computer experts." which kinda makes me leer towards another y2k bug type hoax (sorry i spelled it yrk at first) or maybe just a joke but who knows.

the advice the news is giving is to not turn off your computer tongiht in concerns it may act like a trojan and infct upon starting up as well as to check your auto update status on your comp stating if it has been turned off and you didnt turn it off you my have it alreayd.

im kinda iffy on it out of caution cus i payed for this thing with cash so m kinda sentimental to my compy lol but my auto update is still on alive and kicking and i run checkes regularly usually every other dya or at random when i fel something is going too slow etc.

what do you think?

[ForrestBlack]

As I understand it, and I could be mistaken, it is a worm that will call various websites by IP to download walware or whatever onto infected machines. As a protective measure, Security experts have isolated, identified, closed and/or commandeered many of the sort of destination sites it would look for to find the malicious files to download onto your machine. The difficulty, again as I understand it, is that on April 1st, like 50,000 new IPs become available for it to hit and they can't isolate, register, or commandeer them all. So, in theory, keeping your machine off the web till they see how extensive the problem is may keep you safe. Then again, it could all be bullshit. (or I could be confusing this big computer security threat with another one by a different name.)

[malcolm]

wow that's more than the morons on the news have on it. shit even their "computer experts" (geek squad supervisors) dont know much about it.

luckily i have dialup so i can just pull the plug if need be. lol

[RnR]

http://mtc.sri.com/Conficker/ <--- interesting read

The really really short version is

Yes, it's real. If you're using a legal version of windows and have kept it up to date as well as your anti-virus, no you are not in any danger.

[malcolm]

was just talking with my mom cus she wanted to do an april fools prank on her coworkers at work tomorow and she was saying since she works for government that they normally send out bulletins informing people of potential viral threats-the courts out here ave their own tech crew-and there wasnt any warnings out on this and they update regularly.

[malcolm]

well, it's 1221 ast out here and nothign yet. got a system scan giong too. anyone having problems with their compys?

[OliX]

How did I miss this?
How did I miss any virus threat?

Simple. I don't start them up even if I download them. You gotta know what you're downloading and from where. Common sense. I remember intentionally infecting my older machine when I got a new one to see how good can I fight them off. Finding infected files on my computer, writing them down and deleting from clean DOS start up was enough.

[Dusk]

Well my laptop is so full of viruses it makes a better paper weight than a computer. I got AVG, but it tuned itself off and wont go back on, and its to slow for me to have the patience to download a different one.

[Velvet-Tongue]

People that create Virus's deserve to be slowly crushed between giant metal plates.

[Dusk]

I dont get what the point of them is. My dad got one that did nothing but open and close his disk tray 100 times.

My friend did make one that would delete everything off your computer starting with viruses. After it killed the other viruses you entered a password and it would stop the wipe. Maybe I should put that on my computer.

[malcolm]

People that create Virus's deserve to be slowly crushed between giant metal plates.

I concur.but unfortunately society in general tendsa to glorify badasses and deuchebags and im gonna go ahead and say that the asshats who make viruses are complete deuchebags.

[DJ Bat]

viruses, backdoors, malware, etc., like this happen all the time - why this has reached such heightened notariety is a bit puzzling as there's this one malware that hit me which:

1. Adds an invisible autoexec.bat
2. Adds an invisible "resycled bin" (or something like that) folder
3. Changes your DNS to point to a specific DNS that farms your info but does it transparently
4. Loads your IE up with tons of plug-ins that insure you stay infected.

You try and clean it, fails cause the hidden properties of the simplest file ever - autoexec.bat or virus / malware / etc scanners don't question that too much as people wildly modify that already. Has to be done by hand. Easy enough - just it's 25+ year old method of infecting gets by 100% of all scanners - lol

Now this could of been that method modified to do greater harm as to date, I still haven't seen anything able to diagnose and remove this particular threat so maybe it's that.

Never the less, every year or so, this happens - people wig out cause it's just time to wig out. Smart people never surf sights they shouldn't (or take incredible precautions when they do), open .exe or .com attachments and yes, they notice that picture is really named picture.gif.exe - Duh... that one still gets 75% of everyone out there.... or the .pdf.exe trick, etc...

I'll agree that just have windows free defender installed and other stuff - AVG is the best IMHO and Norton - remove it - It's horrid - resource hog, slows down machines and 75% of the time their firewall breaks and kills your connection for no apparent reason. Be sure to download their force removed and their uninstall doesn't.

[ForrestBlack]

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is a pretty good one to run from time to time.

[malcolm]

the thing t hat ticks me off the most about this whole thing was how sensationalised the news made it out to be.

there were people in a panic since this story hit major this week who ended up going to random websites that were promising patches and shit for it except all they were doing was pumping the compys who visited with malware because the news made this crap out to be the next y2k bug even thuogh noone is for certain what the creators have in mind to do with it.