Conficker’s low-profile threat
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CNN has a story explaining what's been happening with one of the largest botnets to date, Conficker. You might remember back near April Fools' day, we were all wondering what would go down when the botnet started to activate. Turns out, not much. CNN's report talks to insiders, who say most botnet creators appreciate the relative anonymity of a botnet of 10,000 computers, rather than Conficker's massive media-alerting scale, which might play a big role as to why Conficker has been largely silent.
Conficker cripples parking tickets in U.K. city
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Conficker, the fast spreading worm that drew public concern a few months back, has been blamed for delaying tickets for more than 28 days from speed and red light cameras in the city of Manchester, costing nearly $2.5 million (£1.5m) to the city in lost revenue and IT costs.
Medical institutions getting hit by conficker
A handful of undisclosed US hospitals have gotten hit with the conficker worm. SANS internet security center posits that faults with facility security policies seem to be the problem, though they're unsure of the specifics.
Conficker starts to activate… slowly
In lieu of actually doing anything itself, Conficker's payload is instead installing other viruses to do its bidding, according to Reuters.
RIM adds app store, Conficker under-delivers on destruction
RIM has always done one thing extremely well: Push email. Businesses love them, and their success has definitely spilled over into the smartphone-adoring set, btu with the unveiling of RIM's new App World, their term for an App Store, RIM obviously has a different fruit on its mind other than BlackBerries. Should the company continue to go down the "me too, Apple!" route, or should they continue to walk the business line? We ask CNET UK editor Rory Reid and Obsessable editor C.K. Sample III their take on the saga. Plus, the two talk Conficker's failure to live up to the hype, and how us being scared is, "letting the terrorists win."
So far, so good: Conficker is a snoozefest
Conficker hasn't yet stolen your identity, raped your children, nor crushed the internet. Lucky for us, this April Fools' prank is much more harmless than originally expected. Sorry, Leslie Stahl, try again.
When is a netbook really a small laptop? And is Conficker worth the hype?
The company that invented the netbook category, Asus, released a new netbook that includes a DVD drive, a rarity for the classification. Is it still a netbook? Is netbook a lame term to begin with? What makes a netbook a netbook? Kyle Monson and Brad Linder both say the new 1004DN is still a netbook, since it's primarily focused on running net apps. Also, we dive into the Conficker saga, with our predicitions of what we'll see come April 1st.
Researchers may have found a way to “scan” networks for Conficker
While that 60 Minutes piece yesterday might have missed the mark, Dan Kaminsky (the researcher who should have been interviewed about Conficker) and his team have figured out a way to send a packet to a machine, and have it reply as to whether it's currently infected. This means two days before Conficker is set to trigger, sysadmins have a way to scan their networks to find which machines are infected.