Looks like everyone is still here, LOL.

Best,

George

What is a conficker anyway??

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I think the joke was on us.  This has been one of the leading stories in the news for over a week.  Impending doom of the cyberworld, NOT!   ::)

Beth

Actually, one of my client's husband works in computers at St. John's Hospital.  Their whole system has the virus.  It was activated last week.  She said it is terrible.

Jeannie

Having lived through the torturous  ordeal of doing recoding of financial COBOL specifically for Feb. 29th Y2K, these little blips don't even phase me.  

I (being me) learned the hard way to practice safe computing habits when it comes to worms, trojans, spyware and viruses.  It's a simple enough thing to do with today's off the shelf products.  Nothing catches everything on a win pc - there will be many more confickers over the years I'm sure.  I'll get excited when someone manages a dormant instruction code to activate on a UNIX mainframe ;)  

In the meantime, PC Worlds news article was hilarious, with it's comparison of conficker being like Paris Hilton - famous for no other reason than being famous.

Cat

I told our IT people that if the internets should happen to collapse from the virus, please send us an email to tell us what to do.

My daughter e-mailed me about this.  Her company was hit - didn't knock out every computer (including hers) but did knock out 6 - completely.

She said everything literally was wiped out!  But, this didn't happen today, this happened about two weeks ago.

Tonight's local news said that the authors of this little worm do have the technology to unleash it at any time - that they might have laid low for 4/1 just because of the media blitz.

Update those virus protection programs folks.  If it's not this worm, it's another one.

Sandy

Glad the thing was exaggerated for now. Not much trouble for me as my tower is still surrounded by geeks that can't make the thing "accept" anything. It's time for me to get something new, I think.

I'm starting to forget what little I learned about the thing.

Charlie

Sandy_C wrote on Apr 1^st, 2009 at 6:43pm:

My daughter e-mailed me about this.  Her company was hit - didn't knock out every computer (including hers) but did knock out 6 - completely. She said everything literally was wiped out!  But, this didn't happen today, this happened about two weeks ago. Tonight's local news said that the authors of this little worm do have the technology to unleash it at any time - that they might have laid low for 4/1 just because of the media blitz. Update those virus protection programs folks.  If it's not this worm, it's another one. Sandy

It happened about two weeks in the hospital  I was referring to as well.  I was talking to the parent that works there.  He said that the virus has actually been out there since Oct but was supposed to be activated world wide yesterday.   Sounds like a mess!

Jeannie

The conficker virus that created such major problems was the variant b strain from what I've read.  It was indeed a royal pain.  I did not mean to underplay that variant, it was real and it was a pain.

The April 1st concern was a dormant variant c of the worm that was awaiting instruction.  Fortunately the white hat hacker world found a fingerprint and patches and virus db's were updated and ready to deal with it.  It's the variant C that was the Paris Hilton hehe.

Always be vigilant, and use a variety of products along 3with your AV software.  Nothing catches everything.  

Glad no one here on ch.com lost contact though, that's what counts for us :)

Cat

It is unconscienable to me that a hospital would be vulnerable to this type of worm. With all the privacy laws one would thinka  hospital IT team would have all machines patched with monthly MS security updates and corporate antivirus solution.

Additionally, any public bringing in PC's should have to be connected to a segregated network.

QnHeartMM wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2009 at 5:55pm:

It is unconscienable to me that a hospital would be vulnerable to this type of worm. With all the privacy laws one would thinka  hospital IT team would have all machines patched with monthly MS security updates and corporate antivirus solution.

Ain't it the truth. A steak dinner says they outsourced IT to India and now sit wondering how they got in such a mess.