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Another security researcher, Joe Stewart from SecureWorks, is confident that no meltdown will happen. He says all that will occur is "the worm will begin to use a new trick that gives it a better chance of getting around existing defenses that attempt to prevent it from updating." Your hard drive is probably safe, according to Stewart. Modern malware authors aren't mere pranksters, so destroying your hard drive is pointless to them. Let's face it — profit is their motive. They wouldn't be able to enlist your computer in their zombie botnet if they destroy your hard drive.
Conficker C isn't the only worm in town. In fact, Symantec reports that 2008 was the worst year on record for malware. Known malware has increased during the last 12 months from tens of thousands to more than 600,000 new original and variant codes. It's downright scary. One such worm, the "psybOt," has corralled more than 100,000 computers, using home routers and DSL modems, including Linksys routers. This botnet performs distributed denial-of-service attacks, which makes an Internet site or service unavailable to its intended users. These attacks are most often aimed at banks and credit card payment gateways by flooding the target with so many communication requests that it can't respond to legitimate traffic. This botnet can also gather personal information and passwords from your computer. DroneBL, a real-time IP tracker that scans for botnets and vulnerable machines, says psybOt is hard to detect on a home computer and it can disable access to your router's controls, making a factory reset the only way to clear this worm.
Some Internet bots are ostensibly non-malicious. FreeRice.com is a Web site that relies on advertisers to sponsor its rice donation program through the United Nations World Food Program. It has a word game, and for each correct answer you give, they donate 10 grains of rice to people in need. Once it became well known, some people created scripts to play the game automatically, 24 hours a day. One script caused a donation of more than three million grains of rice in a few hours. By contrast, when I played the game, I was able to make a donation of 300 grains of rice in 10 minutes or so. While these scripts' creators have a noble purpose, they might unintentionally cause the advertisers to abandon the site, since real people aren't reading the ads.
 What can you do to protect yourself from malware? The possibilities are endless, and I've only scratched the surface here, but here's some sound advice I found on a techno-geek discussion board called LansingOnline.com. According to "Artie See" (I don't know if that's his real name), "running Zone Alarm personal firewall, Avast anti-virus and Ad-Aware anti-spyware together is a very good effective combination to protect your computer." He goes on to suggest that you make sure your programs, virus signature files, and spyware signature files are all up to date. He suggests using the automatic update feature. And whatever you do, never open any attachment you're not completely sure is safe. You wouldn't have unprotected sex with strangers, would you? (You don't have to answer that.)
If you want to quickly check for infection, go to a site like f-secure.com, secureworks.com or microsoft.com. If your computer says, "Page cannot be displayed," Conficker is probably blocking your access.
What do you do if your computer is infected? See says, "A two-way firewall like Zone Alarm will alert you if a malicious program is trying to 'phone home' (XP's built-in firewall checks incoming data only, not outgoing). And if there is ever any doubt, you can simply disconnect from the Internet until you are sure."
See goes on to say, "In my opinion, Zone Alarm is the most powerful and most effective personal firewall program available, and you can't beat the price (free). Either Avast or AVG are excellent free choices for anti-virus. And Ad-Aware from Lavasoft is one of the two best anti-spyware programs, the other being Spybot from Safer Networking Ltd." See subscribes to Spy Sweeper by Webroot.
Be careful when searching for answers. In late March, Symantec warned that searching for information on Conficker brings up hoax sites that host Conficker, and could infect your computer if you click the link. And watch out for those fake virus warnings that try to trick you into buying a program to "clean" your computer. Use free programs like "SpyBot Search and Destroy" and "MalwareBytes" to get rid of these fake warnings. Windows Defender is a good choice if you use Windows XP.
It's tricky navigating the Internet these days. The answer might be, as some of my computer geek friends suggest, to just stop using Windows. They all use Apple Macs or use Linux with Ubuntu. You can go to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD to get a free disk that contains two versions of the Linux OS — a full-install copy and a version that will run on top of Windows. I haven't tried these yet, but I'm on the verge of switching. You can't be too careful.
Fight back against the Conficker worm and other malware:
- Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool — http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx
- F-Secure removal utility — ftp://193.110.109.53/anti-virus/tools/beta/f-downadup.zip
- McAfee's detection tool — http://www.mcafee.com/us/enterprise/confickertest.html
- Latest Windows software update — http://update.microsoft.com
- Get a free PC Safety Scan — http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm
- Read about how to protect yourself from Conficker — http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx
- Check to see if your PC is part of a botnet — RUBotted (Beta) from Trend Micro, or BotHunter from SRI International
If you're really industrious, you might earn the $250,000 reward Microsoft has offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Conficker creators. Call the Antivirus Reward Hotline at 425-706-1111, or email your tips to the Antivirus Reward Mailbox, avreward@microsoft.com. Whatever you do, surf wisely and avoid the shark-infested waters.
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