Somewhere out there, perhaps in Eastern Europe, perhaps next door to us, a very clever hacker is spreading a sophisticated little computer worm called Conficker.
It could make an electronic mess as it spreads from one computer to another, taking over machines and commanding them to do things their users never intended.
"We've got some bad guys out there who are extremely sophisticated," said Merrick Furst, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology who also chairs an Internet security firm called Damballa. "There are a huge number of machines that might be able to be controlled by people other than the owners of those machines."
Who is behind this computer attack? And what do they want from us? Are they trying to bring the world's computers to a halt? Or is the whole thing just some elaborate April Fool's joke?
"It's not an April Fools prank," said Phillip Porras, a program director at SRI International, a major technology research firm. "We don't know much about how Conficker is being used. We are not sure why Conficker was built."
Small but Sophisticated
"The vast majority of threats we see today are attempts to steal confidential information. We know there's a large underground economy where personal information is sold," said Dean Turner of the online security firm Symantec.
Friday, April 03, 2009
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