Conficker Worm Could Create World's Biggest Botnet

nk497 writes "The worm that's supposedly infected almost nine million PCs running Windows, dubbed Cornficker or Downadup, could lead to a massive botnet, security researchers have said. The worm initially spread to systems unpatched against MS08-067, but has since 'evolved and is now able to spread to patched computers through portable USB drives through brute-force password-guessing.'"

Comments

follow the money.

[leuk_he]

It should not be that hard to follow the money generates by this malware. Infecting 8 million PC should be a crime.

from the write down, it downloads data from

" hxxp://trafficconverter.biz/[Removed]antispyware/[Removed].exe"

follow that money and the bad guys will be found quickly.

Re:follow the money.

[maple_shaft]

This nasty virus has caused me to be up working overtime for the past two weeks.

Well one hint to finding the assholes who wrote this virus is the fact that the virus willingly ignores computers originating within the Ukraine.

That narrows it down to about 80 million people. ;-)

Re:follow the money.

[ledow]

It sounds very simple but you're missing the bigger picture.

How do we know that that virus has ANYTHING to do with trafficonverter.biz or that they knowingly provide that service? What are you going to do, shut down the website without a full legal investigation? Brilliant! I don't like slashdot, so I make a virus that looks like it gets its instructions from them, or from random comments posted on there. You've now made it incredibly easy for me to "social-DoS" a website. I can get them shutdown, or cause them lots of financial hassle to deal with the investigation, just by downloading something from them with my virus.

Or say I want AVG out of business - I make the program download a particular older version of AVG to use a known vulnerability in it to propogate my virus or elevate its permissions. Or I just install it on every machine I infect forcibly. If people don't start associating AVG with malware (like that Antivirus 2008/2009 thing) then I've just given them the impression that it's a horrible piece of software that forces itself on you. Or I make sure that it's the only virus scanner that can or can't detect my virus - either way, I win in discrediting AVG.

The fact is that a virus is an unwanted, untrusted application. Because it's untrusted, you can't just start shutting things down because you find a "clue" in that virus's code. That's why it takes *so* long to convict known virus-writers. International boundaries, legal obligations (hence why you can't just "take over" a botnet that has people's/company's PC's in it and issue random command to "clean it up"), verifiable evidence, there are a million holes.

The problem is not that viruses make money. It's that viruses STILL WORK. That they STILL EXIST. That they are STILL CAUGHT by people. They've been around for 30-odd-years and they are more prevelant than ever and 99.9% of viruses operate on a single platform, targetting old, known, already-patched vulnerabilities. The fix for viruses is not to stop their creation by "persuasion" (removing revenue streams, harsher sentences, etc.) but to prevent them by technical means and ensure those means are adhered to. This means punishing users and operating systems that *don't* conform. Virus infections are a daily occurence and people are now blasé about them... I've had people casually mention having dozens of viruses on their machines and could I have a look if they bring it in next month, etc. The problem, again, is an OS that allows such things to exist and propogate so readily and simply (literally, I could write a Windows virus in a matter of hours with no previous knowledge and virtually zero documentation... Unix-based? Wouldn't know where to start because I would need to find a gaping hole in heavily-tested, proven-rugged, complex code that I can barely understand.

My provider shuts customers off if they use port 139 (and others) on their PC's without having previously informed them that, basically, "I know what I'm doing". The Internet stops and all webpages are replaced by an automated message about how to install a firewall (which, thankfully, also includes the "I know what I'm doing" option). I do "know what I'm doing", I have several layers of protection on everything connected to the Internet but I've left this on. What we need is a massive opt-in that enforces this for the average person. My ISP can already scan every webpage and email for me for viruses and replace them with warning text. They need to extend this to be the default, with opt-out. Then when Joe-Idiot gets a virus, it's probably his own fault because he bypassed the safety barrier and thus you can throw him off if his IP starts spamming or trying to infect others.

Even a simple method (e.g. an automated port scan every day, ala GRC.com's ShieldsUp and an email if open ports change). It's not a catch-all but it will certainly shock a few people if they realised just how open their PC's are and will warn companies and professionals when something happens that sho

How can it spread through USB sticks?

[Viol8]

I dont use Windows much but I assumed MS had disabled or at least set the default to off of the autoexec.bat feature so how else could it spread just by plugging in a USB stick? Someone tell me this security hole the size of a planet isn't still enabled by default in Windows installs??

Re:How can it spread through USB sticks?

[Spad]

Autorun is still enabled by default in Windows for all removable devices.

USB sticks are a little odd though as autorun only works for certain ones with a specific hardware flag set. I would guess it's trivial for this worm to change the flag to enable autorun, however.

Re:ISP Blacklists

[ChienAndalu]

1) ISPs would have to put in effort and money to combat these things

Depending on the amount of traffic that worm generates, it might even be worth it.