A great deal of attention is being given to a battle currently taking place between internet security experts and a malicious worm referred to as “Conficker.C”. Security experts and anti-virus companies wage fights of this kind every day, around the clock, but this one in particular, because it is designed to activate in some way on April 1st and because its sophisticated nature is making it a tough adversary for experts to stop, has grabbed our imaginations and the media spotlight. It’s a story that is motivating many people to search for anti-virus tools and so in response to a growing number of requests I’m listing here a collection of links to the free software, both for the Conficker worm and malware in general.

Conficker.C General Knowledge

The Conficker.C virus currently is infecting computers running Microsoft Windows. Computers running other operating systems such Macs are not affected.

Users who are already running commercial Anti-Virus software and have the latest Windows updates are protected.

Should your computer somehow become infected, there are tools available to for removing it (see below).

This is the third version of this virus released (previously there was Conficker.A and Conficker.B) and with each new version the creators are learning from their mistakes. There may be another version (it will no doubt be called Conficker.D) which can potentially be stronger in which case new removal tools will have to be created for it.

If My Current Anti-Virus Software Is Fine, Why Is This Such A Big Deal?

Despite the ease with which popular anti-virus software can protect against Conficker.C, experts have noticed that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of computers around the globe that, for one reason or another, are not currently running anti-virus software or have not been updated. These machines have become infected.

Conficker.C is a very sophisticated virus that has the ability to organize these infected computers into an independent network, one where the infected computers can communicate with each other, share files, and receive commands from the virus writers themselves. A network of this kind creates an amount of computing power that can be used for a number of malicious purposes, from harvesting financial information to performing online attacks.

We know that the infected machines have been instructed to receive a set of commands to perform some kind of action on April 1st, what exactly, is unknown.

The theoretical danger isn’t that the world’s computers and services will be shut down from a widespread infection, but that an organized group of infected computers can be used to perform some kind of attack. The general public can’t take any steps to protect against this, instead this is a battle for security experts who are working to prevent such an attack from taking place.

It’s important to keep in mind that this is a theoretical danger, we have seen similar viruses used to organize infected computers before, usually to distribute spam or harvest credit card information. There is no specific reason to believe an attack of some kind is coming, but as always in matters of security experts are taking the matter very seriously just in case. For this  reason, the Conicker.C story is receiving more media attention than normal.

 

Running Windows Update 

Click on the Start Button, then All Programs, then Windows Update 

You can also visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com 

Free Protection Software Links 

AVG Free Edition

http://free.avg.com/

AVG is a very effective anti-virus software and the free version covers all your basic needs with constant updates for all the latest viruses including the Conficker variants.

Ad-Aware

http://www.lavasoft.com/ 

Ad-Aware is designed specifically to battle spyware and malware, scanning and removing infections with ease.

SpyBot Search & Destroy

http://www.safer-networking.org

Also designed to tackle spyware and malware, this free program includes the ability to immunize your system against a list of malicious software in advance.

 

Conficker Removal Tools And Instructions 

Although existing commercial Anti-Virus software is effective in removing the Conficker virus, the Internet Storm Center is maintaining an excellent list of removal resources for system administrators that you can view here, just in case:

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=5860

 

Conficker.C White Paper

For those with a technical background who are interested in reading more on this worm and its new levels of virus sophistication, SRI International has written this in-depth analysis:

http://mtc.sri.com/Conficker/addendumC/