Viruses/Worms News

Conficker reaches 10 million, possible peak

Monday, January 26, 2009

Conficker (Downadup) may have peaked at 10 million machines and appears to be slowing down, according to researchers on Friday.

However, the malicious worm is still sitting on infected machines, presumably creating a huge botnet, SCMagazineus.com reports.

Some security officials have speculated the worm could do any number of things, from launching a denial-of-service attack to stealing people's credit cards. It may also be possible the malware does nothing at all.

Approximately three weeks ago, Conficker was found taking advantage of a known Microsoft vulnerability that was originally patched last October (MS08-067). Initially, it seemed the worm only attacked machines that didn't have the patch installed.

However, it later became apparent Conficker could be spread through removable USB drives, even on computers that had been patched. It infiltrated various networks by guess weak passwords.

The outbreak of Conficker is reportedly the worst one to hit corporations since Nimda in 2001.

A recent security report highlighted threat predictions for the year and mentioned the spread of malware through USB devices and camera sticks would increase. For organizations, the threat was described as "an accident waiting to happen."