April Fool's Day Worm Is On The Way; Could There Be Possible Ties to the Windows XP/Vista/2009/360 Infections?

Reports that were just released have indicated that the third variant of Conficker C will be launched on April 1, 2009. Malware creators like using that day to launch their wares upon the world and this could be one of the most damaging attacks seen to date. It has grown more complicated, powerful and virulent. Conficker first bubbled up in late 2008 and began making headlines in January as known infections topped 9 million computers.

Microsoft has offered up a quarter million dollar bounty for the capture of the creator(s) of this worm an have been scrambling to find either a cure of the creator before the deadline arrives. April 1, 2009 is supposed to be the date when all currently infected computers will come under the control of one master machine. The infected machines may be used for Denial of Service attacks, stealing personal information, wipe out hard drives or simply manifest more traditional malware pop-ups and extortion-like come-ons designed to sell you phony security software. Could it be we are seeing Conficker C in the Antivirus 2009/XP/Vista/360 infections? Is it possible those machines were already infected?

Conficker C has been so elusive because it has an enormous number of URL's it uses to communicate with its headquarters. The first version of Conficker used just 250 addresses each day which security researchers and ICANN simply bought and/or disabled but Conficker C will up the ante to 50,000 addresses a day when it goes active, a number which simply can't be tracked and disabled by hand.

It has never been more important to make sure you are properly protecting your computer. Make sure you have adequate security software installed. Antivirus programs are wonderful but they don't catch everything. You should also install anti-malware software as well as anti-spyware protection. It is also recommended that you keep your Windows operating system up to date but to be honest, with all the holes, flaws and install issues Microsoft has been dealing with is that really going to protect you? Make sure that your antivirus software is up to date and actually running because this version of Conficker C can disable it.

Microsoft has offered a free online scanner to check for possible infections as well. That can be found at http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm