Virus expected on April fool's day

[17thenoob]

Ahhh shit

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2531345.htm

PM - Tuesday, 31 March , 2009 18:18:00
Reporter: Carly Laird
LISA MILLAR: The computer world is bracing itself for the latest virus; one so menacing that Microsoft has offered a reward of a quarter of a million US dollars for tracking down its creator.

The Conficker virus is reported to have infected 10 million computers and the experts think the 1st of April is D-Day. Just what the virus is going to do tomorrow they're not entirely sure.

Here's Carly Laird.

CARLY LAIRD: It started working its way into computers last October. Now the Conficker virus, also known as Downandup, has reportedly infected 10 million terminals.

PATRICK GRAY: Look I've seen estimates of anywhere between three and 12 million and to tell you the truth I think they're all pretty much stabs in the dark. Suffice to say it's big. I think that's the most appropriate way of trying to measure the size of this thing. It's big.

CARLY LAIRD: That's Patrick Gray who publishes an online trade magazine called Risky.biz. Along with computer experts around the globe, he's waiting to see what tomorrow will bring. The 1st of April is when conficker is set to activate.

PATRICK GRAY: The modern virus is really designed to, it's designed for profit. So what it will probably do on April 1st is install further bad, malicious software onto infected computers, which will then monitor the user's key strokes, use that computer as a way-point for SPAM email messages. Use that computer as a node in what we call a denial of service attack, where that computer upon receiving an instruction will attempt to flood a website to knock it offline.

And of course people can then blackmail the operators of those sites and say, you know unless you give us $10,000 we're going to keep this site down. So that's really what's going to happen.

CARLY LAIRD: Tyrone Miller works for Pure Hacking, a company employed by corporations to try to hack into their systems in order to test their security.

TYRONE MILLER: All of those 10 million computers would be used in a distributed way to attack a single source.

So an example of this that happened in the past was in 2004 there was a virus called the the MyDoom virus which infected millions of computers and they were all designed to kick off at the same time and attack sco.com and microsoft.com, to basically take down their websites.

And Microsoft and SCO obviously tried to put in preventative measures to handle the bandwidth consumption for their websites, but basically until the viruses got shut down, they were being attacked.

This is the same sort of circumstance where millions of computers have been infected and we're going to be waiting to see whose going to be taken down potentially, or if anything's going to happen.

CARLY LAIRD: And that could be the punchline, a devilish April fool's joke that has the computer world in suspense.

Microsoft has put a quarter of a million US dollars on the heads of the developers and distributors of the virus, a bounty, as it tries to chase those who created it. There are suggestions this one may have come from Eastern Europe.

Tyrone Miller says it is sophisticated.

TYRONE MILLER: It does things like disables Windows update, Windows security centre, Windows defender, Windows error reporting. All these things are usually used to try and fix the actual vulnerability itself, so once you actually get infected, it disables a bunch of common antivirus solutions, so even if there is a fix, you're likely not to get cleaned up.

CARLY LAIRD: Rob Pregnell from Symantec, a company specializing in creating antivirus software, describes it as a standoff.

ROB PREGNELL: A little bit like a battleground that's laid out before us but until somebody blows the whistle and starts to make a manoeuvre, starts to make a play, neither team will really know what to do to best defend themselves against that action.

CARLY LAIRD: And he agrees that this particular virus is able to pack a punch.

ROB PREGNELL: It's really a good execution on the attackers side, of bringing together all of the various techniques that have been used in recent years and in recent months, all together in one threat.

LISA MILLAR: That's Symantec's Rob Pregnell ending that report.

[Hitman]

yup..
this is true..
this came out in the paper's today (Malaysia) *New Straits Times Paper*
and y would they do this kind of things?
omg..

[shinnsohai]

making fool of people lolz

[Supermaker]

i checked my pc with a specific program....i dont have that virus on my pc^^

[bummybum]

last april fools i got a blue screen of death screensaver and i cannot change it anyhow

[JB Gzn]

last april fools i got a blue screen of death screensaver and i cannot change it anyhow

that's an old one, i had it too.

[minorutono]

Like a picture of a BSoD or a real BSoD for screensaver?

[RoboC]

Symantec has the fix for this virus.

[JB Gzn]

Like a picture of a BSoD or a real BSoD for screensaver?

just a picture of a BSoD , you could'nt change anything - even yopur background was fucked up - and you get the screensaver in 10 sec or so.

[bummybum]

jb how do u fix it?

[JB Gzn]

reinstalled windows - windows xp -> vista.
now i'll soon be going vista -> windows 7.

my 200GB harddisk was full so i needed to clean it anyway - the virus was just the "little push in the right direction"