Final News Report

Conficker Worm Hits University Of Utah
INFORMATIONWEEK BUISNESS TECHNOLOGY NETWORK
4/16/2009
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216500433&subSection=News

The Conficker virus, which is the most recent super virus, snuck onto computers at the University of Utah last week. The virus caused the university to shut down their internet access to the students in order to contain the virus. The virus is believed to be have been contracted from an infected USB drive. Fortunately for the university and its students, it is believed the virus was caught early enough and that no personal information had been stolen. Conficker is a virus that can only be found on Windows. Although Microsoft sent out a patch for computers to stop Conficker from hacking in, many still do not update their computers regularly or at all. So many computers are still left open for attack. The virus contains the ability to morph and change, finding different ways to attack a computer. Microsoft has offered up a large reward to anyone who has information on the people who started this virus which is believed to be created in the UK. In my opinon, this in part due to peoples lack of knowledge of their computer and the internet. In the article, it stated how there was a patch sent out to computers to help solve this problem, but many have no idea that this has been done and have their automatic updates turned off. But, overall, this seems to be a very dangerous virus, with its ability to change and mutate to get around different tactics created to stop it. Hopefully, the creators of this virus will be caught and no further damage will be done.