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."

Comments

Re:Keep spreading lies

[gsgriffin]

Thanks for being brave enough to stand up and say that on /. I had to cancel my collo service and give away a linux web server box that I owned after trying to keep up with numerous patches every month and the eventual termination of product lifecycle. Within a couple months, my server was cracked and used to try to break into Stanford's graphic department while racking up an $800 bill over the weekend.

Re:its not hard

[PrescriptionWarning]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the biggest reason most malware exists is because the default user in Windows is an Administrator level user, whereas in Linux you usually have to run as sudo or as root to do the real damage. Of course its highly likely most people would put in their root password if asked because common tasks like updating and changing system settings also requires the password. Well you probably can't win either way, but the harder it is for the malware to automatically install itself the better.

Re:its not hard

[mgblst]

Or, even easier, don't use Windows.