Conficker Spam Rate & Latest Conficker Victim: Utah University
In the latest of weekend news about Conficker, 700 computers in the Utah University Campus got hit with this worm which includes hospitals, medical school, and colleges of nursing, pharmacy and health. Of course, within that large network comes a lot of personal data including, medical records, credit card numbers, computer log on and other private and personal data. Luckily, the hospital records are secured and in what way, only they know which is a good thing.
Also, reports are coming in that the spam being produce by Conficker is in the billions, thanks in part to include Waledac spam bot, the successor to the Storm Worm. In one article from Computer world, some possible scenarious came to this, either the two groups are working together or the conficker group sold the rights to them. Now Conficker is beginning to spam by using the infected computers to send it out. In a startling stat a Russian security firm mention the following, “In just 12 hours, one bot alone sent out 42,298 spam messages,” said Kaspersky researcher Alex Gostev in a message Friday. “A simple calculation shows that one bot sends out around 80,000 emails in 24 hours. Assuming that there are 5 million infected machines out there, the [Conficker] botnet could send out about 400 billion spam messages over a 24-hour period!”
So at this point we know Conficker is now selling fake software and beginning to spam by the billions and so people should beginning to check their e-mail more diligently and don’t download any software that comes fro ma pop up message. Of course, make sure to update your computers even if your computer is not legit because that is where the large percentage of the infections are coming from.
SOURCES
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Security&articleId=9131380&taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=1
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/162988/confickerinfected_systems_spew_spam.html
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