Slashdot Mirror
Downadup Worm — When Will the Next Shoe Drop?
alphadogg writes "The Downadup worm — also called Conflicker — has now infected an estimated 10 million PCs worldwide, and security experts say they expect to see a dangerous second-stage payload dropped soon. 'It has the potential to infect about 30% of Windows systems online, a potential 300 to 350 million PCs,' says Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence in the counter threat unit at SecureWorks. The worm, first identified in November and suspected to have originated in the Ukraine, is quickly ramping up, and while Downadup today is not malicious in the sense of destroying files — its main trick is to block users from accessing antivirus sites to obtain updates to protect against it — the worm is capable of downloading second-stage code for darker purposes."
I am an ex-Linuxer, If Linux was used more it would get viruses too. That aside, whoever wrote this virus/worm should get Gitmo, and yes, McCain/Palin in 2013 will reopen it to teach morbidly obese nerds in their basement not to write viruses. This is cyberwar and they should have an example set to them. If we were a proper country like Soviet Russia they would get the Siberian wolf blowjob by now.
Or use a Mac and forget your laundry list of protection aids.
Just get a Mac already. Seriously.
"From where do you want to get pwned today?"
It's 2009... I can't believe we're still dealing with this crap in 2009.
Nothing will change until Microsoft execs face jail time for putting out such crap.
Actually, Flash provides a write-only clipboard. It can't read the clipboard unless the user gives it permission (short of some vulnerability in Flash, of course).
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/