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How to protect your computer from Conficker

Once every few years, security experts will enter a race against time to fight some malware, virus or worm which is set to wreak havoc on a set date. More often than not, that date is April 1.

Virus creators love to target April Fool's Day. According to security news the latest worm, a piece of malware called "Conficker C", could lead one of the most damaging attacks in years.

Bounty Hunters

Conficker first appeared in late 2008. It made headlines in January 2009 as the known infections reached over 9 million computers. The worm has now reached its third variant called "Conficker C", and has grown complicated, powerful, and virulent. But no one knows for sure what it will do exactly once its D-Day arrives.

Driven partly by a quarter-million-dollar bounty on the head of the writer of the worm by Microsoft, security researchers are busy digging into the worm's source code attempting to engineer a cure or to find the author before the deadline.

April 1st - What will happen when Conficker reaches its deadline?

On April 1, conficker will set all infected computers under the control of a master machine located somewhere across the web.

After that, what might happen?

The zombie machines may become denial of service attack pawns
They may steal personal information
They may wipe hard drives
They might just display pop-ups or come-ons designed to sell phony security software
..

What can you do?

Be extra careful about protecting your PC.
Patch the Windows Operating System completely by using the Windows Update.
Update your protection software.
Make sure your security software and malware protection is actually running, as the Conficker work may have disabled it, in preparation for its deadline.
Microsoft offers a free online safety scan, which will scan your machine for any versions of the worm.

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