The Conficker Is A LIE!

Well, it's April 1st, and the Internet (and its lies stupid pranks) are still alive and well. The hype of Conficker causing some kind of Internet-crashing, world-dominating clustercoitus have played out the way the real security experts (as opposed to so-called 'Computer Experts') had expected.

In case you missed it, the reason that experts weren't freaking out about Conficker are because some very smart virus researchers had already picked apart the Conficker.C variant and determined what it's going to do today. It's really nothing serious. Check out the F-Secure Conficker.C Q&A and SRI's more detailed Analysis of Conficker.C.

Of course, just because the world won't die by Conficker's hands doesn't mean it's okay to be lax on your security. You should still:

• Consider not using Windows :P
• Install a virus scanner and keep it up to date if you need Windows
• Always stay on top of your operating system's patches and updates

Also, sorry for the meme-tastic headlines lately. "The Cake Is A Lie" comes from the video game Portal. "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" was from an arcade game called Zero Wing.

Happy Morris Worm Day!

Twenty years ago to the day, Robert Morris, a Cornell student at the time, unleashed his worm (from the MIT campus!) on what little of the Internet existed in 1988.

To this day, no one really knows for sure how many computers were affected by the Morris Worm, which exploited any of several different vulnerabilities in order to replicate itself. Supposedly designed to be "harmless", it caused a large-scale denial-of-service attack, partly because of an error in the routine to check if it had already infected a given host.

Robert was the first person tried under the 1986 Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, and DARPA formed CERT Coordination Center in response to this incident. I found some interesting commentary about this via the Security Bloggers Network (of which HiR Information Report is a member). There's also some more information on the Wikipedia page: [Morris worm].

Creative Commons Photo Credit: Go Card USA on Flickr