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Conficker Preyed on a Publicly Available Windows Flaw and the Sharing of Flash Drives

One particularly persistent and prevalent worm, Conficker, continues to infect computers to this
day, but the virus may have fallen prey to its own success. At its height, experts estimate that
Conficker had infected as many as 15 million computers. Estimates put the total economic
damage of the Conficker worm near $9 billion! This is partially because it rapidly spread through
business and government networks in Europe and the Middle East that were in the habit of
sharing flash drives, which Conficker exploited in addition to spreading via email. USB sharing
poses a significant physical security risk to computer networks.

The worm was built to hijack computers by exploiting a flaw in Windows. Strangely, this flaw
was revealed by Microsoft themselves when they released an update to correct it.
Unfortunately, many people did not update immediately, and Conficker simply spread faster
than the update. This demonstrates how important it is to carefully control information about
security risks, and update your systems ASAP.

Fortunately, the worm spread so rapidly that cyber-security firms throughout the world detected
it very quickly and took it very seriously. A multinational counter-virus task force was created. It
succeeded in slowing Conficker’s growth and stopped it from communicating with its creator.
Whatever devious purpose that person had for the worm, it could never achieve its ultimate
goal, possibly preventing the billions of dollars in damages from becoming trillions of dollars.
The day was saved due to many companies putting aside their differences and joining forces.

About the Author:

Lee Ying has over 10 years experience in the tech and security industry. He currently writes for
various websites, if you would like to contact him you can find him on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lee-ying/9a/18b/238. Follow me on Twitter @LeeYing101

7 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – June 2015 Edition
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