1 In 3 Windows PCs Still Vulnerable To Worm Attack

CWmike writes "The worm that has infected several million Windows PCs, Downadup or 'Conficker,' is having a field day because nearly a third of all systems remain unpatched 80 days after Microsoft rolled out an emergency fix, security firm Qualys said. Downadup surged dramatically this week and has infected an estimated 3.5 million PCs so far, according to Finnish security company F-Secure Corp. The worm exploits a bug in the Windows Server service used in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, and Server 2008. Qualys' CTO said, 'These slow [corporate] patch cycles are simply not acceptable. They lead directly to these high infection rates.'" This is indicative of why some are calling for Microsoft to rethink Patch Tuesday, as reader buzzardsbay pointed out.

Comments

Re:Immune

[acohen1]

And here I thought you didn't attract worms because you walk without rhythm.

Awesome Dune Reference

Re:router

[Ephemeriis]

NAT must be set for a router to work. The very nature of a router is to use NAT. Ironically though it is a bigger issue on corporate networks as they are more likely to forward off ports. Not that NAT is a panacea by any means, but it is better then nothing. All routers need to do some type of NAT period, it is how a router works.

Wrong.

Routers route, that's what they do. They get traffic from one place to another. They do not require NAT. There were plenty of routers on the Internet long before NAT even existed.

I remember when consumer-grade NAT routers were starting to get big... All the weird little headaches when NAT didn't work right... Trying to get FTP connections do do what they should do... And then folks started advertising their routers as having "transparent NAT", which generally worked the way it should.

Worm attack is for pussies

[gatkinso]

SNAKE attack... now that is scarey.