US-CERT Current Activity Conficker Worm Targets Microsoft Windows Systems Original release date: March 29, 2009 at 8:18 pm Last revised: March 29, 2009 at 8:18 pm US-CERT is aware of public reports indicating a widespread infection of the Conficker worm, which can infect a Microsoft Windows system from a thumb drive, a network share, or directly across the network if the host is not patched with MS08-067. The presence of a Conficker infection may be detected if a user is unable to navigate to the following websites: http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=conficker_worm&inid=u s_ghp+link_conficker_worm http://www.mcafee.com If a user is unable to reach either of these websites, the Conficker infection may be indicated (the most current variant of Conficker interferes with queries for these sites, preventing a user from visiting them). If a Conficker infection is suspected, the infected system should be removed from the network. Major anti-virus vendors and Microsoft have released several free tools that can verify the presence of a Conficker infection and remove the worm. Instructions for manually removing a Conficker infection from a system have been published by Microsoft in Knowledgebase Article 962007. US-CERT encourages users to prevent a Conficker infection by ensuring all systems have the MS08-067 patch (part of Security Update KB958644, which was published by Microsoft in October 2008), disabling AutoRun functionality (see US-CERT Technical Cyber Security Alert TA09-020A), and maintaining up-to-date antivirus software. US-CERT will provide additional information as it becomes available. Relevant Url(s): <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958644> <http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx> <http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA09-020A.html> <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007> <http://www.mcafee.com/> <http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=conficker_worm&inid=us_ghp_link_conficker_worm> ==== This entry is available at http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.html#conficker_worm_information Produced 2009 by US-CERT, a government organization. Note: Posted according to copyright permissions of US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) Purpose of Posting -- To help others keep their genealogy computers healthy.