Communications of the ACM
Headless Conficker Worm Lives in Computers
A unified effort has lopped the head off a treacherous Conficker computer worm but the malicious computer code lives on in infected machines.
Credit: Agence France-Presse
The people who control the Conficker computer worm have been prevented from using it to control computers and create a botnet, according to a Conficker Working Group report. However, the report says that more than 5 million computers remain infected with variations of Conficker, which spreads via the Internet or USB memory sticks and takes advantage of networks or computers that do not have the latest Windows security patches.
Nevertheless, the working group has been touted as an example of the benefits that can result from collaborative efforts between traditionally competitive rivals. The group included security researchers from Microsoft, IBM, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Cisco, Facebook, VeriSign, and many others. "In many ways, Conficker did serve as a test run for the cybersecurity community to learn where their strengths and weaknesses were," the report says.
Conficker's authors have not been caught, and the report notes that they may never have intended to use the botnet. "It is likely that the Conficker Working Group effort to counter the spread did make it more difficult for the author to act with impunity, but the author did not seem to have tried his or her hardest," the report says.
From Agence France-Presse
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Abstracts Copyright © 2011 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA 
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