conficker a dud so far

Well today was April Fools day and our favourite media virus Conficker was written-up many times over the past week in the papers and shown via newscasts all over the world. Surprise! The virus did was it was told it contacted its generated servers, only to do nothing, and the internet is still alive!

This threat is NOT over! Why the media and security organizations chose April 1st as doomsday is a mystery and was based mainly on speculation by reverse engineering the code. There are still many unpatched computers out there which need to be attended to. This day has been anti-climatic, CNET’s Conficker blog was boring to read, and we’ll have to wait until the hackers decide to make their next move, most likely during a quiet time when less IT and security staff are working.

My shift at the CCS IT HelpDesk in the library consisted of a 10-second power outage and the regular library help questions. The power outage turned off all desktop computers with stressed students working madly away to finish their last-minute assignments. I delt with about 6 lost assignments after the power outage. I was only able to recover 2 of the 6. Its ironic how people who lose their assignments almost always recognize that they SHOULD have been saving to the designated places stated on the desktop backgrounds. It’s unfortunate that most computer users do not read anything on their screens and continue to click OK and YES the majority of the time. You can blame Microsoft and Apple for accustoming their users to this.

On that note, those devious hackers also figured out how to get their search ratings high-up on Google’s results. Simply googling “Conficker” in Google generates many results, the majority of which are bad (as they have viruses or malware ready to download). This caused many curious users are used to just “clicking” to infect themselves with the virus.

If you haven’t done so, please patch your computers, use Firefox, and make sure your virus definitions are up to date. If you’re running an illegal version of the windows, make sure you check your computers thoroughly or buy a real copy.

The internet is a dangerous place. Be prepared. Lets see what the media says about Conficker now. If you’re looking for more information about it, please refer to the links below. I’ll keep you updated on its status.

Some links:
Microsoft – Bulletin MS08-076
McAfee Avert Labs – Conficker.C observations with wireshark
Wikipedia – April Fools
CNET – Conficker silence
Vancouver Sun – Conficker
Ars Technica

are you ready for the rabid virus?

Conficker? aka W32.Downadup.x

Well the media hype has been going for the last few days. I was going through my Google Reader feeds as I usually do and I saw continual stuff about the Conficker.C virus.

The NY Times, Vancouver Sun, CNET, BBC, oh and my favourite one: CBS’s 60 Minutes which was recovered by CNET, have been commenting on this virus and as usual, media attention is probably blowing this out of proportion. We really won’t know until Wednesday, April 1st, 2009. Maybe it’ll be one giagantic April fools joke. This is all very unlikely as the botnet and hacking networks are capable of making lots of revenue.

Are you protected?

For most virus scanners, as long as they are updated, they should be able to offer more safety from those who have no anti-virus tools.
The big key is to make sure you have the latest Windows OS Updates, and more specificall,y Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 – Critical.
That patch was released in Oct last year so there shouldn’t be any excuses!

This virus is likely to affect corporate users who’s IT admins use group policies to disable auto-updates.

For the nerds…

Have some fun reading these science-report like documents:

http://mtc.sri.com/Conficker/ <— this one is ridiculous…and no, I did not read it. I just linked it! There are also 3 addendum.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007

For everyone else…
Sit back, relax and watch the news!

I should mention that I am working during the afternoon shift at the CCS HelpDesk on Wednesday. I’m expecting a regular shift of university students who lose their essay due to stupidity and the usual, “where is the washroom/how do i scan/how do i print” questions.

PS: The 60 minutes interview was very amusing!

More links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10204590-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/03/canadian-ca-domain-prepares-united-confickerc-defense.ars
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090326.wworm0326/BNStory/Technology/home

exam traffic

Exams are approaching for university students in Canada. This period typically starts from the second week of April untill the end of the month. I’m done on the 17th, but if you’re unlucky, like at UBC, you could be stuck until the bitter end! I’m pretty sure that I’ll return home to Vancouver before most of the friends there are done.

But Exam Traffic

As most of you know, my friends and I launched picaday.ca last Monday. So far with Google Analytics, we have seen a gradual increase in traffic over the week. We’ve gotten approx 372 visits according to GA. Will this traffic increase over the exam period as people find more and more reasons to procrastinate?
I wish we could see the stats to FML or collegehumour, maybe even digg and reddit. I wonder if their sites see an increase in Canadian traffic.

I’ll post again through the exam period to comment on this. Perhaps I’ll have more blog posts then to rant about random things.

I take no responsibility if you clicked the links above and are now about to spend countless hours on the interweb

Update: my friend Doug informed me that digg and collegehumour use quantcast for stats tracking, you can view their stats here
http://www.quantcast.com/digg.com
http://www.quantcast.com/collegehumor.com