Is Conficker an April Fools Joke?

Update 4/9/2009: Obviously, the Internet didn't melt down, but some of of the information security people around were waiting for the other shoe to drop. According to this article, Conficker has woken up, and started moving files. We're still looking.


Original Post:

If you've been paying attention to media, you've probably heard about the Conficker worm. It really is a big thing, and has been a problem to corporate IT staffs since last October.

If you're a home user, there's not much you can do about it, except make sure your virus signatures are up to date, and run a virus scan.

If you would like a quick sanity check to see if you have conficker - click on one of these two links:
Symantec , or F-Secure.

You should see Symantec and F-Secure, two network security companies. If you had the Conficker worm, you'd get something else, and should immediately run a full security scan.

The reason it's come up now to the mass media is that researchers have found a reference to April 1 in the Conficker code, and they're not sure what it does. Conficker might wake up and do something, and it also might be part of a bigger event, so we're keeping alert.

You can find lots more about it at the Honeynet project and SANS (Extreme technical content on these sites )

Perry