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The Conficker Virus: Don’t Panic

A more recent post on Conficker, updated April 1, here

A new computer virus is spreading across the Internet, but security experts say that it hasn’t resulted in much damage and that its impact is primarily psychological.

Mark D. Martin India/Flickr

The virus, called Conficker or Downadup, first appeared in November but has recently become more prevalent, infecting millions of machines by some estimates. Technically it’s a worm, a kind of malicious software that automatically spreads itself from computer to computer. The cyber-security community is up in arms because worms haven’t been an issue for years.

Over the course of the decade, computer hackers shifted their techniques away from rapidly spreading worms—people will remember worms like “blaster” and “Melissa” that shut down entire offices for a day or two—towards targeted snippets of code that are harder to detect. The reason: money. Worms are basically a big irritant; code that gets past security software can be used to steal information or make a computer send spam email, both of which command a big price on the black market.

In theory, Conficker could be used for these nefarious purposes, but to date it hasn’t been. “This is serious to the extent that it is a return of a threat that we haven’t seen in some time,” says Alfred Huger, a security researcher at Symantec. Michael Argast of the security company Sophos adds that all Conficker is doing now is “causing headaches for IT administrators.”

Microsoft issued a software update that protects computers from Conficker in October. Most anti-virus software will also stop it. The result is that while Conficker is spreading rapidly, it is mainly doing so in parts of the world where people haven’t updated their systems. About 29% of infections are in China, followed by Argentina, Brazil, Russia, and India, according to Symantec. Many of these countries are among those with the highest rate of software piracy, which probably isn’t a coincidence. Less than 1% of infections appear to be in the U.S. according to multiple security researchers.

Conficker is, by all accounts, a pretty sophisticated piece of software. So why would a hacker put it out there if he didn’t intend to use it to make money? Ryan Sherstobitoff, a security evangelist with Panda Security, says it may just be a big distraction to divert attention from “a monster data breach that no one knows about yet.” As for Conficker itself? “I don’t think it’s time to panic,” he says.

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