I guess this was more of a 'progress report' on the Conficker Trojan and 
what's become of it since the beginning of April, when all hell did not 
break loose because of it.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lynn Evans" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 2:26 AM
Subject: Re: [VICUG-L] Malicious Software Is Revised




Malicious Software Is Revised - NYTimes.comHello All:



I would think the reason for this post is to be helpful and informative. 
However I find such virus warnings scare the daylights out of most computer 
users.



Wouldn’t id be better to tell people about how to keep the viruses off ones 
computer in the first place, and if you did get the darn thing where to go 
to get rid of it?



We should all be practicing safe computing by now and helping the newcomers 
to do the same.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Peter Altschul
  To: [log in to unmask]
  Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 2:34 PM
  Subject: [VICUG-L] Malicious Software Is Revised








------------------------------------------------------------------------------








------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  April 10, 2009

  Malicious Software Is Revised
  By JOHN MARKOFF

  The riddle of a malicious software program that has spread throughout the 
Internet deepened Thursday as security researchers examined a new version of 
the software that they said made it more difficult to eradicate the program.

  The program, known as Conficker, targets versions of Microsoft’s Windows 
operating system and has now been distributed in four versions, computer 
security specialists said.

  Several of the groups monitoring the program said the most recent version, 
which began to appear Tuesday, appeared to be targeted at improving a 
peer-to-peer communications system between computers that are infected and 
hardening the system by making infected machines more resistant to 
anti-virus software.

  Several researchers also said there might be a connection between the 
authors of Conficker and of another program known as Waladec, a malware 
program that has been used to distribute fraudulent advertisements through 
e-mail spam. They also noted that the Conficker authors have switched 
strategies and are using the program’s peer-to-peer mechanism to update the 
system. Originally, they had appeared to plan to download instructions to 
Conficker by generating new Internet addresses that infected machines could 
download instructions from.

  An earlier version of the program had been set to begin contacting servers 
on April 1, raising widespread concern about the authors’ intent. Now, 
however, the system for programming Conficker uses a peer-to-peer mechanism 
that can be initiated from any one of millions of infected systems.

  The consensus within the computer security industry is that although there 
are now some indications that Conficker’s authors are intent on building a 
giant spam system, there is no hard evidence.

  “This is just Step 5 in a thousand-step chess match,” said Vincent Weafer, 
vice president of the security response division at Symantec.



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  No virus found in this incoming message.
  Checked by AVG.
  Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.51/2052 - Release Date: 
4/10/2009 6:39 AM




  No virus found in this outgoing message.
  Checked by AVG.
  Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.51/2052 - Release Date: 
4/10/2009 6:39 AM



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