GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 13, 4-2-09

Fri Apr 3 21:00:32 EDT 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 13                           

4-2-09

1 Conficker hysteria         

2 Worms

3 More Conficker, Blackberry TV, more April Foolery, Internet TV

4 Data recovery               

5 April Fools

6 Spyware protection

"Conficker Worm to Strike April 1st", "Computer experts brace for Conficker worm", "Computer virus could cause internet chaos in coordinated April Fool's Day attack on PCs", "Computers face virus meltdown tomorrow" and on and on.

Last week I told you about Conficker (aka Downadup) and mentioned the most likely estimate of its spread (3-4 million).  I told you what security experts expected, which was a change in the way the worm checks for updates, and I warned that the threat from the huge untapped botnet grew exponentially from the change.  I admit, I used the unneeded term "Internet tsunami" to describe the threat, but it may well be accurate depending on what the botnet eventually gets used for.

The mainstream press, on the other hand, made little mention of what was actually expected yesterday but predicted dire results of the dreaded "April Fool's Payload". 

The hyped up warnings estimated the infected machine count up to 20 million computers and predicted attacks on banking systems, mass PC hijackings and the dire prognostication "A machine that's infected will be triggered, and it will engage in harmful activity."

Umm. no.

My favorite quote comes from http://tinyurl.com/dm2tuy:

" It can be difficult to tell whether a computer is infected. In a business setting, there might be extra network activity as the virus tries to spread. At home, Conficker might prevent access to anti-virus or security Web sites. It also stops anti-virus software updates."

Doesn't that behavior actually make it pretty easy to detect?  I mean if you can't get virus updates or Windows patches wouldn't that make you a little suspicious?

The fact is, April 1st came and went and the Internet seems to have survived.  Like the over-hyped Y2K bug, which had been pretty much taken care of by early 1999, Conficker was much ado about nothing.

Here's some sage advice:  In the future, when the media starts spouting apocalyptic warnings about something coming or already happening on the Internet, don't take it at face value.  Visit your antivirus provider's website, hit some technology sites like cnet.com or technewsworld.com.  Or, of course, ask the Gurus.  You're much more likely to get the straight skinny from actual technicians than the local or network news anchors.

And the best way to protect your PC from these types of infections?  You know the drill, do your Windows updates and use an antivirus product that updates its definitions frequently.

Microsoft issued a patch to close the security flaw that this worm exploits last October.  The worm showed up a week later, the creators getting all the information they needed from the patch announcement to exploit the flaw on unpatched machines.

If the patch had been applied when it came out. instant protection!

So now I have coined a new mantra:  Backup backup backup, update update update.

Backup, update.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

April 1 has come and gone in some parts of the world - Conficker is
still here. While the day passed by relatively uneventfully, there are
still people at risk:

http://tinyurl.com/cc892m

Privately-held QuickPlay Media Inc plans to deliver full length
popular television shows to BlackBerry smartphone screens

http://tinyurl.com/c4t938

While the potentially dangerous Conficker worm was being tracked
throughout April Fools' Day, more harmless hoaxes were being fired out
across the Internet:

http://tinyurl.com/cc973m

Cable industry executives said on Wednesday that putting cable TV
shows on the Web was an opportunity for the industry rather than a
threat, though technical challenges still need to be addressed:

http://tinyurl.com/c85pql

Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus at gmail.com 
www.mattstodayinhistory.com

Download of the Week

DiskDigger is more than the usual undelete utility that we see offered as a free app. It goes "beneath the file system" to recover data on a sector-by-sector basis from hard drives, thumb drives, etc. DiskDigger couldn't be easier to use. Select a drive, select the types of files to be recovered (jpeg, mp3, documents, etc.) then click Next. Get it here: 

http://dmitrybrant.com/diskdigger 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Threat of the Week

Internet crime in 2008 jumped 33% over 2007, with identity and financial fraud in the forefront.  Despite constant warnings from tech sources and even the mainstream press Internet users continue to fall for these scams, some of which are quite sophisticated but still the same old same old.

Rather than cover the same litany of warnings I usually do, here's a fresh perspective:  Someone else covering the litany of warnings ;)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/internet.crime/

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Email Question of the Week

Q:  Now that I have upgraded to AVG 8.5 which definitely has spyware
protection, can I get rid of Spybot?

A:  I wouldn't.  There's no actual definition of what spyware is so
some programs ignore some files that other scanners pick up.

Regardless of what real-time protection you run I still suggest
keeping a couple of passive scanners like Ad-Aware and Spybot on hand
just to get more opinions. 

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Contact info and legal stuff

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