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Conficker Worm Could Create World's Biggest Botnet

Posted by kdawson on from the holding-our-collective-breath dept.

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.'"

2 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. follow the money. by leuk_he · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:How can it spread through USB sticks? by Spad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.