Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Conflicker

I have seen more warnings about the "conflicker" virus than I can shake a stick at, and I have wondered, if it's such a threat, why hasn't anyone released a free antiviral to get at it? My friend JD , who's a sysadmin, sent me one yesterday... you can download/run it here. He says there are countless variations of this virus, but this application gets the common ones. Now the funny thing is, this message came in right as I was reading about a similar bit of freeware at Bad Astronomy. I have run both, and both say I don't have this particular flu.

This virus is set to scan thousands of random sites tonight at midnight, for updates and further instructions, so no one knows exactly what it will do. But millions of computers are thought to be silently infected... like AIDS, it remains below the radar until a certain point, then blows up. Blowup time is midnight, folks. I was worried this would be a nuisance, but both routines run fairly quickly and painlessly.

1 comment:

Dean Wormer said...

I hate the bastards that write those viruses but the conflicker thing had all the vibe of a fake deal. Not surprising it was not that big a deal.