April fool's day virus

[Nickswitz]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but apperently there is an April fool's day virus that has been spread around for about a year, and is going to be activated on April fool's day. IDK if this is true or not, but it sounds kinda scary-ish
This is the wiki page for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker

[Mark]

There is ALWAYS some kind of damned virus out there.

[Nickswitz]

Yeah, but this is apparently like a really bad one, that takes control of your computer. I think it's a hoax, but thats just a personal thought.

[Mark]

Wait.......has anyone seen Teaos today?

[Nickswitz]

Wait, it is April 1st there isn't it. We have connections on the other side, but we can't use them, how unfair.

[Nickswitz]

I found him. So, is it true, is it true. I really wanna know.

[Teaos]

I havent had any issues so a far. I agree with nic that it is probably an april fools joke.

[Nickswitz]

That would make sense.

[stitch626]

Of course its an April Fool's Joke.
The question is, is the joke scaring everyone and then nothing happens or is the joke everyone thinks its a hoax and their computers get infested?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The virus is real from what I know and has infected millions of machines. Most of the infections, though, are in China, Chile, Russia, and other countries in which pirated versions of Windows are common. People running pirated Windows wouldn't be patched because they disable updates to avoid being caught. Actually, a "cabal" or companies including Microsoft, ICANN (an important player in running the Internet that few people know of), Symantec, and others has been trying to counter the virus.

The question isn't whether the virus exists (it does), but what will it do when the botnet it created goes active (supposedly, Apr 1)

[Captain Picard's Hair]

There is a patch MS released for the bug the virus exploits which most computers in first world Western countries should have, so most of us here should be safe from it.

Most serious viruses nowadays have financial motivations - so people are wondering what the botnet is designed to do. Security experts have been poring over the code of the virus (it's extremely complex) but just don't know what it's meant to do since that isn't in the code. The code of the virus stipulates that it connect to a server (which is what is meant to happen tomorrow) to download instructions, so only the creators of the virus know what those instructions are. It's not so much an issue of becoming infected tomorrow (it's supposedly infected over 10 million machines already - though mostly in poor nations) since that phase of the virus has been going on for a while now, but what it'll do when it downloads instructions and goes live tomorrow.

[Tsukiyumi]

Well, I guess I'll find out, at least.

Maybe I'll just disconnect from the internet for a day...

[stitch626]

Sounds fun. I can't wait to get it.

I am a collector of sorts. I like code.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Just to put some numbers on it, an article I came across just now claimed that only 6% of infections are in North America, but 45% are in Asia. So I'd imagine we here wouldn't see much of it.

[stitch626]

Well, I guess thats for the best.