. The threat of the Conficker worm remains latent. Its spread rates account for 8.9 percent of the global rate of malware detections.From this worm constantly appear new variables that make it one of the most complex threats due to its high number of affected users. Worldwide the rate of spread is close to 9%, in Latin America it exceeds 10% and for example in Argentina about 25% of the teams reported the detection of the Conficker worm, according to data from ThreatSense.Net, Eset's early warning system.
Many of the variants of this malware exhibit the date of the next updates, one of these is scheduled for April 1, 2009.
Due to the fear that this news has raised, Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, assures that the Conficker malicious program creates URLs randomly; then, on infected computers check if in any of those URLs there is any new version of your code and if so download it to the computer.
By April 1, the latest variant will create 50,000 new URLs. "We can't know if any of them will host a Conficker update. Its author could host in those URLs even another type of malware that does not have to be an update of Conficker, "says Corrons.
Since November 2008 began the spread of Conficker, which exploited a vulnerability of Windows to be distributed, and that is why it has reached many computers. This worm uses different means of infection especially through USB keys, MP3 players, etc.
ESET recommends protecting yourself to avoid falling victim to this worm by having updated Windows systems on the network, disabling the automatic execution of USB devices, protecting network shares with strong passwords and having an antivirus with proactive detection capabilities against new and unknown threats.
