The Conficker Worm hype

Update 4/20/09: The Conficker worm has so far proven to be what the title of this article says: hype. Most home computer owners were not affected by the worm since a patch to fix the security vulnerability and prevent spread of the worm was released as a Windows critical (high priority) update in October. By default critical updates are automatically downloaded and installed on most home computers. The computers that got infected were primarily business computers which are maintained by corporate IT managers who have chosen for some reason to manually apply Windows critical updates at their discretion and on their own schedule.

3/30/09: In the past few days the media has been publicizing the Conficker/Downadup computer worm, causing a lot of worry to PC users. Microsoft released a Windows Automatic Update patch last October, and most Anti-Virus programs detect the worm. Therefore as long as your automatic updates from Microsoft are installed, and your Anti-Virus program is up-to-date, there is nothing to worry about.

The worm prevents access to many security vendor websites, including this article about Conficker from Symantec. <– If you can’t access that link, you may be infected. If you can access it, there’s no need to download the security software they recommend in the article.

Recent versions of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool detect Conficker. To run the tool go to Start > Run and type mrt in the box.

You can read more information about the worm from Cnet.