News Report #4

"Conficker: What Happens After April 1?"
Stephanie Hoffman
4/2/2009
http://www.crn.com/security/216402353

This article about the Conficker worm, talks about a brief overview of the worm that until a few weeks ago, was not even known. Many of the people interviewed in this article say the Conficker worm is something to worry about, but it is not likely to be as harmful as some bugs we have seen in the past. While nothing happened today as many experts believe, experts believe it will strike again once the publicity decreases.
I first heard about this worm about the middle of March when it was first talked about on the news. I recently saw an interview on 60 minutes about the worm and many corporations have been hit even though they have much better security than the typical user! UNCW sent out a mass email the other day about this. You would figure with the elaborate network on-campus, the University would have notified students and faculty when it first came about! After looking on Google for some additional information about the Conficker worm, it appears it is not a worm that just suddenly appeared within the past few weeks. A few articles were written in January of this year. One in specific from the BBC (1/20/09) says this worm was first discovered in October of 2008. If security experts would have publicized this worm earlier then I believe there would be way fewer infected computers! One statement I do not necessarily agree with is the last quote in the article that says, “If you're worrying about how to prevent all those other threats that are out there, then you've already taken care of Conficker.” I do not agree with this because another version is supposed to be released in the near future. You may be safe now, but for how long? That’s always been a problem with the Internet; so many ways to exploit someone’s personal information and it seems your computer can never be secure enough!