Hey Peachtree City and AR friends, as you know April Fool's day is normally full of playful pranks, and plenty of tomfoolery but the prank on this April 1 is a real threat to millions of computers. Well, you may not have heard about it until recently on the news or 60 Minutes but a virus call Conficker C, threatens come out of dormancy and take over your computer on April Fools Day. The virus is said to be able to disabe all your security programs and then proceeding to steal all your personal information. In fact, CBS reported that it had a recent fight with this virus which took them 10 days to find and isolate. Does Conficker C pose a viable threat? All I can say is that everyone needs to at least be prepared.
How can this be you say? Well from what I heard the "worm" may be already on your system laying dormant in a Window file in an important system folder. It was reported that the "worm" spreads through malicious websites, unreliable downloads and infected USB drives. Once triggered, the virus will take over making it impossible for you to start you system even in safe mode or go to websites to get anti-virus software. What is even scarier is that now that your computer is vulnerable, it can now be controlled by the entity that created the virus.
CNN reported that this virus has infected between 5 to 10 million pc's!! Microsoft has a bounty of $250,000 out for anyone that can tackle the virus and located the creator. Don't take this warning lightly. It is believed that the first strand of Conficter was created out of a free function for security programs by MIT Computer Science professor, Dr. Ronald Rivest and has been around since 2008.
The biggest shock that I heard yesterday on 60 Minutes was that a huge number of "viruses" were created by gangs of hackers in...Russia. Not only that....the hackers were kids. The only thing that was even more astonishing than a 14 year-old kid resorting to this type of malicious behavior was that these hackers actually advertised their viruses openly on the web!
The last piece of information I want to send out to everyone is that although this virus may pose a very viable threat, there will be all kinds of vendors out there soliciting their anti- virus software that is probably bogus. That's right folks, hackers have found all kinds of ways not to make money. So check with Microsoft or an experienced software expert for more advice and information. The best of the best have been working on protecting us...Let's hope its in time!
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