Conficker: The latest/greatest virus
One of my good friends sent me a link today about a “super virus.” I usually don’t pay much attention to articles about viruses that come up in Tech news. They hardly ever seem to apply to me as a “normal” US citizen and as a Mac user. Yes, I know Macs are indeed susceptible to viruses and that they simply just don’t have enough popularity in the business world to warrant that much effort being put forth to program a bug. My theory is that there are just more stupid ignorant computer users in the PC world 
.
So anyways… on to the good stuff. Here’s the link my friend sent me (Worm Infects Millions Worldwide). Apparently this virus (called conficker, Downandup, and a variety of other names) is initially installed via a corrupted USB flash drive. Once you plug a little bugged stick into your computer, the typical autorun menu pops up asking you what you want to do with this newly connected drive. It’s ordinary in all sense of the word… except that it has two options to “Open folder to view all files.”
Double Vision… (courtesy of Yahoo)
Clicking the top “Open folder…” option actually installs the virus and… um… infects pretty much every computer you’re connected to in the network from my understanding. The scary thing is that this bug can give the crafty bastard(s) who created it remote control of all info on the infected machine. It can accept any command from like 250 changing domains or something crazy like that. It’s also apparently got a lot of “randomized elements” meaning it’s constantly changing, making it difficult to completely figure out.
Pretty fascinating stuff. Here’s another article from Yahoo that gives more info and also explains how to rid yourself of this sinister bug.
