I wrote on March 31 about my thoughts on what would happen on April 1 when the Conficker Worm was supposed to come to life and melt the Internet as we know it. All the major media outlets running stories on this major outbreak of malware on the Internet...like it just started. I say to this, welcome major media outlets. The Internet has been infected for a long time. Taking steps to protect yourself should be done in order to not have personal information about you stolen by cyber criminals.
Why all the hype? Probably the main responsibility for spreading the hype was all the security vendors such as AV vendors, and other companies dealing in computer security. Nothing really happened April 1. Now on Thursday of this past week, the Conficker Worm started to push payloads to the infected hosts out there on the Internet. Things that were seen included keyloggers, rootkit functionality, and rogue anti-virus or fake AV which has been common in the past 6 to 9 months.
If you patched your Windows OS when they came out with updates in October of 2008, and use strong passwords, and disable autorun, you are probably just fine. You must always be on the lookout for new attack vectors. The bad guys are out there and they want to gain financially at your expense. Learn to protect yourself. I have many posts in the past that should help you in taking the steps to stay safe.
Stay safe, hope your weekend was fabulous and bring on the new week!
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