QuoteBy Steve Rennie, The Canadian Press
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OTTAWA - A malicious cyber worm could wreak havoc on millions of potentially infected computers April 1 - or it could all be one big April Fool's joke.
But the Canadian Internet Registration Authority isn't taking any chances when it comes to the latest variant of the Conficker worm.
CIRA, which manages Canada's dot-ca (.ca) domain name registry, warned Tuesday that millions of computers running Microsoft's operating system may have been infected since the worm began spreading last fall.
Beginning April 1, the worm is expected to force infected computers to randomly generate and connect to 50,000 web URLs a day from 110 domains around the world, including dot-ca domains.
A secret "command-and-control" file instructing the worm to perform malicious actions could be hidden on any one of those URLs.
"This command-and-control computer that all of the infected computers are going to try to reach out to is hosted under a particular domain name," said Byron Holland, CIRA's president and CEO.
"This worm is quite smart, so what it does (is) it creates a smokescreen by generating a random list of many tens of thousands of domain names, among which the single domain name is associated with the command-and-control computer."
It's not known what - if anything - the worm's creators have in mind. They might overwhelm the Internet with spam, monitor keyboard strokes to collect passwords and banking information or delete files on a person's computer.
"Once a virus has control of an individual computer, it can effectively see what's happening in, or happening to, that computer," Holland said.
"At this point, we really don't know what the actual intent of this one is."
CIRA worked with security experts around the globe to "reverse engineer" the worm so they could find out which sites it will generate, Holland said.
As a preventative measure, the authority has now blocked 157,000 unregistered dot-ca domains expected to be generated by the worm, he added.
Microsoft released a patch in October to stop the worm from spreading. But newer variants are more sophisticated than the original worm and have continued to infect computers.
This latest variant of the worm, Conficker C, was identified in early March. An earlier variant, Conficker B, worked like this latest variant except that it generated a list of only 250 to connect to every day.
A cabal of Internet groups and companies, led by Microsoft, is offering $250,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the worm.
Roughly 1.2 million dot-ca domains are registered with CIRA.
That's pretty harsh. While I hope it is a joke, that sounds pretty devestating. I mean, a quarter million reward? They're not playing around.
Any of you heard anything on this? It has my attention, after the whole school divisions IT team was at my school today looking to install failswitches...
A friend of mine who's beta testing Windows 7 mentioned the virus to me. I was too busy laughing at the fact that he said Windows 7 wasn't affected by it to really hear him describe the virus, but it seems pretty serious. yay mac
The codename for the virus is probably Windows.
Downandup, Kido, and Conficker.
Yeah, it's a pretty harsh virus.
Who knows, maybe military computers are infected, and the April 1st activation of this will unleash nukes and kill us all.
But hey, that's likely to happen, right?
That sucks. Hopefully they can figure out who's doing it and stop it before anything happens.
"APRIL FOOL'S, I JUST HACKED ALL OF YOUR COMPUTERS OLOLOL"
A computer virus? Wow. You are actually concerned about a computer virus doing massive widespread damage? This is not going to be real.
Hm, for some reason all I can think of is "I hope nsider.ca will be okay...".
Is this bad? D:
With my luck, I'll get intercourse ed over.
I'll start raging now.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Quote from: Customrobo13 on March 26, 2009, 07:43:29 AM
With my luck, I'll get intercourse ed over.
I'll start raging now.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Just in case you're one of the unlucky ones.
http://www.bdtools.net/
Damn, that's rough.
Can't wait to see all the Sat Kills.
Our April Fool's joke this year will far outweigh anything this virus can accomplish. :3
Quote from: Syncathopy on March 26, 2009, 07:47:05 AM
Quote from: Customrobo13 on March 26, 2009, 07:43:29 AM
With my luck, I'll get intercourse ed over.
I'll start raging now.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Just in case you're one of the unlucky ones.
http://www.bdtools.net/
Avast! (http://dw.com.com/redir?edId=3&siteId=4&oId=3000-2239_4-10019223&ontId=2239_4&spi=ee0fbb0f5d1d79fcca98226eefc63a1b&lop=link&tag=tdw_dltext<ype=dl_dlnow&pid=11014091&mfgId=85737&merId=85737&pguid=hA5ptwoPjAYAADpCkB4AAADd&destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.cnet.com%2F3001-2239_4-10019223.html%3Fspi%3Dee0fbb0f5d1d79fcca98226eefc63a1b) ?
Quote from: PsychoYoshi on March 26, 2009, 02:17:55 PM
Our April Fool's joke this year will far outweigh anything this virus can accomplish. :3
It's why I love you.
And yes Cecil, it is a virus. Because I don't know, we're not dependent on computers or anything.
Quote from: Silverhawk79 on March 26, 2009, 06:57:39 AM
Hm, for some reason all I can think of is "I hope nsider.ca will be okay...".
Is this bad? D:
Umm.................
WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT!
Quote from: Rayquarian on March 26, 2009, 09:02:46 PM
Quote from: Silverhawk79 on March 26, 2009, 06:57:39 AM
Hm, for some reason all I can think of is "I hope nsider.ca will be okay...".
Is this bad? D:
Umm.................
WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT!
...O_o?
lol badass
This virus has made me look forward to April 1st. It has me wondering what will happen next. If I get f***ed over, oh well~