Heads up--potentially nasty little worm infestation to be aware of

[dogemperor]

On April 1, a new version of the worm/botnet Conficker (specifically Conficker.C) is supposed to deliver its "payload" (which includes downloads of instructions from upwards of 50,000 registered domains and measures to lock down the worm against attempts at detection and removal

Comments

[dogemperor]

Once the Vista box is turned on again, what I'd recommend (because this is pretty much what I do "out of the box"):

a) Immediately install strong antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall software (if you aren't using a router with a built-in firewall, that is). My personal prefs are Avira or Avast! Home edition for the antivirus, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Spybot S&D for the antispyware (I usually do keep two on the system, because some antispyware progs pick up things that others don't), and as for firewalls, either ZoneAlarm free edition or Comodo Personal Firewall free edition (I tend to lean towards Comodo myself; you can get it here).

If you're REALLY paranoid, one thing I can recommend is burning these on a CD (before you leave for Germany) and running them on the home computer when it's not hooked up to the Internet. It's probably not necessary to be THAT paranoid, though, and if you're able to get to the antivirus vendor sites in particular it's a good indication you aren't infected with Conficker.

One particular tool I like (and you can burn before you go to Germany and then use) is the Avira Rescue CD--pretty much you can boot from that CD and scan and disinfect your system. (I'd probably recommend this, then booting to Windows and installing antivirus/antispyware and doing scans.)

Since it's not had antivirus installed on it, perform a full antivirus and anti-spyware scan using your preferred tools (Avast! is a *little* easier to set up, Avira is a *little* more configurable, both are damned good at finding what's out there)--re antispyware in particular, I'd probably go with scanning with *both* Spybot S&D *and* Malwarebytes Anti-Malware just to be safe.

b) As soon as you've installed these, immediately perform Windows Update.

c) If at all possible, consider investing in a router as a hardware firewall--and lock THAT down too (if need be, I can give instruction on that).

(why yes, I do computer security for a living :D)

[saturninesun]

Thank you *so* much!
I'm on DSL and have a router, so that keeps some stuff out I think, and I also think there's a firewall of sorts, and Vista does the thing where it's annoying about every program and "Are you *really* sure you want to execute it?", which I'm grateful for in times as these.