● 10.03.09

●● Conficker Strikes Again

Posted in Security, Windows at 7:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Windows-powered computers continue to be hijacked in large numbers due to Conficker

According to this new report from The Register, “Conficker infected communal PCs used by students at Oxford Brookes University on Thursday, leaving sysadmins with a difficult clean-up job.”

This is small potatoes in comparison to a handful of British hospitals that got shut down by Conficker, with new examples appearing all the time. In Australia, Conficker is being called an “Internet meltdown threat,” so taking Windows zombies off the Internet is a likely option there.

In other news including statistics:

Blaming the Conficker worm on the majority of the assaults, Akamai discovered attacks on 4,100 unique ports, with 10 specific ports hit in about 90 percent of the cases. One specific port, 445, used for Microsoft Directory Services, has proven especially vulnerable and was compromised in 68 percent of the attacks, allowing hackers to invade computers with this port open, Akamai said.

The cost of Windows’ poor security is estimated at trillions of dollars. █

“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

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