Conficker worm mostly a bust so far

[Airbot]

There was a lot of hype drummed up in recent days about the most recent variant of the Conficker worm, which was supposed to deliver some sort of nasty payload today.

more:TechSpot News

 

[jfar]

Thats Good news.

 

[weedmonk]

Yup, the frenzy is whipped up by the NAV companies and sniping Fanboy's in the media. I woke up on tuesday and laughed when CNNHN reported it as though skynet was about be unleashed.

 

[Hybrid]

"Due to lots of research it seems we got pranked pretty bad! There is a conficker virus yes but it's been long since deactivated and gotten rid off, nothing to worry about if you took care of it LAST YEAR, and it was around october"

 

[Jacee]

It now has different variations ... it's not gone and dead. All the warnings are real and they are about "playing it safe".

 

[Airbot]

I have to agree, it's not dead, quite the opposite..but it still was over hyped nonetheless.

 

[Colonel Travis]

I have to agree, it's not dead, quite the opposite..but it still was over hyped nonetheless.

Not just over-hyped but irresponsibly over-hyped. My mother-in-law didn't know if she should even turn on her computer yesterday. That may sound ridiculous to everyone around here (including me). I eventually talked her off the cyber ledge. But most people in this world don't want to bother with even the bare minimum of how a computer works, they don't have the time, don't care, etc. They just want to send email, buy something off amazon or whatever. Honestly, that's perfectly understandable because everything is not for everybody.

But when you've got every TV news person, every radio news spot, every newspaper, every magazine, every blog saying for 48 hours in a row what a world disaster this stupid conficker thing will be, that's not news. It's lazy @#$%! morons shouting from the mountaintops a bunch of alarmist crap.

Not saying conficker was not a threat. Just saying you had to really dig deep to find someone who knows what the hell they're talking about.

 

[SIW2]

The Conficker worm today has begun to phone home for instructions but has done little else. Conficker was programmed to today begin actively visiting 500 out of 50,000 randomly generated web addresses to receive new instructions on how to behave.

Conficker D-Day Arrives; Worm Phones Home (Quietly) - PC World

 

[napilopez]

Its definitely good news that it hasn't done anything yet, but I personally don't think it was overhyped at all. In fact I wondered if people weren't warned enough, as none of my friends new about it until I let them no about it. And this is coming from someone who is tech saavy, and rarely falls over the hype of things, and is the complete opposite of a conspiracy theorist, lol.

I don't think the hyping of the worm was a result of what security experts expected it to do, but rather what it could have done. It's about the risk. I mean anyone remember the ILOVEYOU virus? That caused massive damage because people were unprotected. Conficker didn't do anything, but it very well had the capability to do massive damage.

And quite frankly, what does it matter if it didn't do anything yesterday? Correct me if I'm mistaken but April 1st was only the day it started to recieve instructions again. That doesn't mean it had to do it yesterday, it can begin to recieve its actual instructions anytime afterwards. With the intelligence this piece of malware was coded, I think it would be pretty stupid of them to send the instructions when everyone anticipated it to.

I personally don't think anything will happen, but from what I know, this is the most potentially dangerous virus we've had in a long time.

 

[Colonel Travis]

Its definitely good news that it hasn't done anything yet, but I personally don't think it was overhyped at all.

When someone is afraid to turn on their computer, that is overhyped. Does that mean ignore warnings? No. But I worked in daily journalism for two decades. Trust me, these people are not the best and brightest.

Conficker was supposed to unleash its terror on millions of P.C's across the globe

Internet Worm 'Time Bomb' Set For April 1

Computer worm stirs fears of April Fool's mayhem

Experts Warn New "Worm" Set To Infect, Control Millions Of PCs On April 1

 

[napilopez]

Ahh, those links are indeed ridiculous.

Let me rephrase myself. I think it is the April 1 date perhaps that was over-hyped. Like a doomsday type of thing. And I suppose some networks did make it sound too much like the end of the internet lol. But now I'm kind of worried that less smartified(yes, stupidness intended) sources are acting if the threat is over now that april 1 is over. But yea. Letting people be aware was important, but in the way they didn't was inadequate.

 

[Jacee]

Of course it was 'over-hyped' ... how else could the message about this network Bot get to your *average* Windows user?

I don't feel that it was a waste of time and/or effort on the part of the news media. They do tend to take a bit of worth while news and over do it, but it got the word out.

 

[black dog]

The computer security business works much the same way as the arms manufacturing industry.

Firstly invent a threat to instill fear, then charge to save you from it .
The bigger the beat up, the more dollars for those in the fear industry.

Parasites!! :sa:

 

[Lebon14]

Although I've heard of that worm, I wasn't hyped about it. So not hyped that my PC remain antivirus-less and firewall-less (might buy NOD32 though).

When you visit the same websites (not a large variety but all safe), there's just no fear.

 

[Jacee]

black dog, this is not so .. no "invent" on the part of installling fear, just a timely precaution!

Lebon14, please don't infect the rest of us if you choose not to use a firewall program or an antivirus program. It is your choice to do what you want to do, but just remember that you are a part of contributing to or contaminating the Internet

 

[johngalt]

Although I've heard of that worm, I wasn't hyped about it. So not hyped that my PC remain antivirus-less and firewall-less (might buy NOD32 though).

When you visit the same websites (not a large variety but all safe), there's just no fear.

So, you disable UAC, Defender and Windows Firewall on all your Win 7 installs?

 

[Airbot]

Sometimes I don't understand how someone can say they have no AV or AS protection at all and "know" without a doubt that they're perfectly fine and clean. Boggles my mind.

 

[napilopez]

Sometimes I don't understand how someone can say they have no AV or AS protection at all and "know" without a doubt that they're perfectly fine and clean. Boggles my mind.

Some of us just have skizzles like that, yo. jk Been using AVG since forever + 2 arbitrary units of time.

 

[torrentg]

I want my ZA back in action for 7. I'm a long time user. I like how the Windows Firewall now has outbound protection, but it's still not as convenient and easy to use as clicking a system tray and marking a box as x or check. Microsoft should do something similar with their firewall. And yeah, I know about the controller program for W.F. but it's still not the same.