Slashdot Mirror
Has Conficker Been Abandoned By Its Authors?
darthcamaro writes "Remember Conficker? April first doom and gloom and all? Well apparently after infecting over five million IP addresses, it's now an autonomous botnet working on its own without any master command and control. Speaking at the Black Hat/Defcon Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure, was told not to talk in detail about the Conficker gang — the problem is that not all researchers were under the same gag order. Just ask Roel Schouwenberg, senior anti-virus researcher at security firm Kaspersky, who says 'The Conficker botnet is autonomous; that is very strange in itself that they made Conficker replicate by itself. Now it seems like the authors have abandoned the project, but because it is autonomous, it can do whatever it wants and it keeps on trying to find new hosts to infect.'"
Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.
"Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity." - David Gelernter
Well apparently after infecting over five million IP addresses, it's now an autonomous botnet working on its own without any master ...
Hmmm, sounds like its authors should have spent more time on their Torgo routine. You know, the bit of code that takes care while the master is away.
... but the master would ... not approve.</Torgo>
<Torgo>The master would not approve; he likes you
My work here is dung.
Possible scenarios:
1. they've been busted for something else and are now in gaol. Conficker patiently bides its time waiting for the stars to be right and its dark master(s) to be freed.
2. they've given up on that crappy little botnet and are working busily on a new, much stronger, more powerful one.
3. It was never invented by Russian mobsters, but by the Bush administration, intending to hack all the voting machines and deliver unto George a third term.
4. someone forgot their password, it was written on a little post-it by the monitor, which was vacuumed up by their mum when she did some spring cleaning.
5. The inventors had their fun with Microsoft and the internet, but now they've discovered girls and beer.
I wonder if they just managed to lock themselves out, so they can't control it.
Either that or someone walked in front of a beer truck.
Not really. I use Linux. What was it you were worried about again?
That's what happens when software isn't open - it gets abandoned and the users are screwed. Free Conficker now! Turn it over to the EFF!
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I didn't know that a HD crash can also take out the keyboard. Also I didn't know that you are supposed to make backups of your keys. I always thought just buying a new keyboard would work. :-)
[Note: Yes, I did understand that cryptographic keys were meant. I just couldn't resist the opportunity of the joke.]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Next time, please do us all a favor, and resist.
I for one would far prefer an overload that needs Viagra over one that is virile. Cut's down on the pain, significantly.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Next time, please do us all a favor, and resist.
but wouldn't that be futile?
rewriting history since 2109
Just wait until it finds out about git and starts maintaining the tty subsystem, writing itself into linux...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
1. Create autonomous botnet
2. Nap
3. ???
4. Profit
Nah, it works to good to be written by Symantec... ;)
We don't discriminate. If it writes decent code its contributions will be welcome.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
...it followed me home, can I keep it?
The real news is that Conficker has evolved, intellectually, beyond the intellect of it's creators. Singularity/Cornfucker has arrived, disguised as a botnet!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That's all we need...
An abandoned, horny bot-net with extreme daddy-issues.
That ALWAYS ends well.
Maybe Alan Cox can step in as maintainer, now that he has a little free time off his TTY maintainer position?
Actually, the article was submitted by the Conficker bot. It has evolved a rudimentary PR function...
A statistical blimp, eh? Sailing serenely over the countryside, counting and comparing, picking out trends among the populace below...
Not a sentence!
Nah, it works to good to be written by Symantec... ;)
I was thinking that the surest sign it is not from Symantec is that it is too easy to remove.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"