Millions of PC infected over Windows

A computer virus that deploys the vulnerabilities of the Windows operating system infected millions of personal and business computers across the globe. The experts think that this is the first phase of a multistage attack. The leading computer security representatives still do not know who launched the infection, or what the further stage will be. 

Known as Conficker or Downadup, it is spread by a newly discovered Microsoft Windows weakness, by revealing network passwords and by hand-carried consumer gadgets like USB keys. Worms as Conficker not only penetrate around the Internet at high speed, they also connect infected computers into united systems named botnets, which can admit then programming instructions from their secret masters. According to security researchers, the success of Confincker was due to weak security experiences of companies and individuals, who lack on installing new updates. Many security firms have updated their programs in order to detect and eradicate the software. The program based on elaborate shell-game-style technique to allow someone to manage it remotely. Its day work generates a new list of 250 domain names. To manage the botnet, a hacker would need only to enlist a single domain to send instructions to the botnet around the world. 

Many computer security firms pointed out that Conficker emerged to have been written from scratch, it had analogies to the deed of a suspected Eastern European criminal organization that has benefited by sending programs known as “scareware” to personal computer users that seem to notify users of an infection and ask for credit card numbers to pay for bogus antivirus software that indeed further infects their computer. 

One of plotting evidence left by the malware creators is that the first version of the program halted to inspect if the computer had a Ukrainian keyboard layout. If it identify it had such a keyboard, it would not infect the computer, in accordance with Phillip Porras, a security investigator at SRI International who has demolished the program to find out how it functioned.