Conficker claims five million computers

A report by the New York Times claimed that there are now five million computers under its control including government, business, and home computers in more than 200 countries.

Even though Conficker has done little more than extend its reach to more and more computers -- and with the much-anticipated April 1 doomsday passing without incident -- some security experts were wondering if the program has been abandoned.

Rodney Joffe, director of the Conficker Working Group, said: “It's using the best current practices and state of the art to communicate and to protect itself. We have not found the trick to take control back from the malware in any way.

“Even if we lose against Conficker, there are things we've learned that will benefit us in the future.”

The report claimed that some experts have only tiny clues about the location of the program's authors, as the first version included software that stopped the program if it infected a machine with a Ukrainian language keyboard.

Further, it claimed that some researchers think Conficker is an empty shell, or that the authors of the program were scared away. Others argue that they are simply biding their time.

Mikko H. Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, wrote on his Twitter page that it was ‘amazing' that "it's the end of August, and Conficker is *still* generating traffic from over six million IPs.”

See original article on scmagazineus.com