Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

3/31/2009

Conficker Worm

Filed under: Advice from your Uncle Jim,Career Archive,Deep Thoughts,Geek Work,MicroSoft,The Dark Side,The Network Geek at Home — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Monkey which is in the late afternoon or 5:01 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

Are you worried about this?

So, this whole “the Internet is going to melt and your computer is going to explode on April 1” thing has really reached a fever pitch. Are you worried? Should you be? Look, I know that 60 Minutes did a thing about it, but, honestly, I think it’s mostly been blown out of proportion. For one thing, it takes advantage of an old, well-known flaw in Windows that was patched back in October, which was months before this worm got out into the wild. So, if you’ve been doing your updates like you should, chances are that you’ll be fine. And, if you haven’t, well, thanks to a couple of security researchers, there are some tools to take care of the problem.

So, if you haven’t done it yet, update your antivirus programs. And, then do your Windows updates. The rest should pretty well take care of itself.
Oh, also? Don’t open e-mail from strange people, especially if the name on the e-mail sounds a little off. Don’t go to shady or sleazy websites, either. Those warez sites all are just as likely to have infected programs as they are “legitimately” pirated ones. So, just don’t use them.

As usual, the press are making a really big deal about this, but most people probably won’t be effected. Just do your updates like you’re supposed to and don’t break the law, no matter how you feel about copyright and software prices.

So, uh, stay calm and carry on.


Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The spirit , the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur."
   --Vince Lombardi


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