This is not a joke. Update your anti-virus now. And even then, it may be too late. This is a Windows virus.
NYT:
Given the sophisticated nature of the worm, the question remains: What is the purpose of Conficker, which could possibly become the world’s most powerful parallel computer on April 1? That is when the worm will generate 50,000 domain names and systematically try to communicate with each one. The authors then only need to register one of the domain names in order to take control of the millions of zombie computers that have been created.Okay that sounds a bit too much like Terminator.
Here's the 60 Minutes report from the other night:
What do you do? Reader Bradford suggests the following (I confirmed his links, they're genuine):
Also, please make sure every Windows machine is patched. Follow the instructions of your Operating system here.More from the Washington Post.
Also, there is a free removal tool being provided by Mcaffee and it can be found here.
Make sure you click on the link on the upper right for the STINGER application.
If they are already infected, the WORM prevents the anti-virus software from updating automatically and it prevents people from getting to security websites. What is worse, if they did not update their OS with the Microsoft patch I sent you before they got infected, the WORM makes the system THINK that it already has that update! What this means is that the end-users Windows OS will not update itself to fix the hole that the Worm is using. The end-user will see a dialog box that tells them their system is already up to date and does not need the patch. It is the WORM that is making the system tell the end user that!
At this point, the only way I can determine that a person can be 100% sure to be un-infected is to run the STINGER application I sent you earlier. I ran it on all of my personal systems. If they cannot get to that site, I would be concerned as that may mean they are infected.
