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After 1 Year, Conficker Infects 7M Computers
alphadogg writes "The Conficker worm has passed a dubious milestone. It has now infected more than 7 million computers, security experts estimate. On Thursday, researchers at the volunteer-run Shadowserver Foundation logged computers from more than 7 million unique IP addresses, all infected by the known variants of Conficker. They have been able to keep track of Conficker infections by cracking the algorithm the worm uses to look for instructions on the Internet and placing their own 'sinkhole' servers on the Internet domains it is programmed to visit. Conficker has several ways of receiving instructions, so the bad guys have still been able to control PCs, but the sinkhole servers give researchers a good idea how many machines are infected."
It's too bad there isn't a tiresome mod.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Second time? Citation needed, seriously.
Apart from self-contained data loss bugs that corrupt single files or bork their own data, the only difference between them is the identity of the data affected--deleting your user folder is no more or less "destructive" than deleting the Program Files folder or the System32 folder or any other combination of important data.
More to the point, you have a short and selective memory. On the Windows side, the number of data loss bugs in the Microsoft KB is staggering--many of which far more easily triggered than the Snow Leopard bug (which PC World was unable to reproduce). There have been plenty of famous and significant data loss bugs in Windows' history, like the Windows 98SE shutdown bug, the Windows 2000 ATA bug, and even the Windows XP bug that ate the user data folders, quite similar to the Snow Leopard bug: http://www.v3.co.uk/vnunet/news/2116562/winxp-bug-ate.
How about the similar data loss bug in the Linux kernel a few years ago: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-976427.html. A simple Google search will reveal several more, before and since, in the kernel and in distribution packages.
Then there's the infamous Mozilla bug that wiped out the entire Program Files directory on Windows: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=4264
It's not just user-level software development, either. Just look at Intel's repeated data loss bugs in their SSDs.
All the big names have let a bug like this slip at one time or another. It's unfortunate, but inevitable.