The Security world is all a buzz with the 1st of April rapidly approaching. No one knows if its really going to happen, or if it really is an April fool, but there is a good change the Conficker (MS08-067 Vulnerability) is going to strike.
Many organisations may not have been able to patch, but now is the time to be thinking of how your going to cope should the worst happen. At the vary least you should be running an AV Product that can detect the various variants, and have the package on hand ready for deployment if your impacted, so you can deploy in an untested fashion.
Looking at this realisticly if your already infected you might be at risk, but no more than any other day that they could lauch the attack, I dont see anyone suddenly distributing and infecting more machines all of a sudden, this will probably just gradually grow as it has over the last months.
If your a home user, and not sure if your patched, you might want to try this excellent bit of command line Kung Fu from Ed Skoudis -
wmic qfe where hotfixid=”KB958644″ list full
Microsoft Excerpt:
In early March, security researchers identified a new version of the Conficker virus, called Conficker.C. This third variant of the virus, like its predecessors, exploits the vulnerability patched by Microsoft’s security bulletin MS08-067, released in October 2008. While not currently released, it has been confirmed that this virus will become active and malicious on April 1, 2009.
Conficker.C is a major revision of the original virus. This variant includes new functionality that ranges from new infection methods to disabling security tools. The Conficker.C virus will scan and kill processes for security products including disabling: firewalls, patch deployment, and antivirus software.
WHAT TO DO BEFORE APRIL 1ST:
The best defense is to apply Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 to eliminate the vulnerability. Administrators should ensure every system on their network, internal and external, physical and virtual, has the MS08-067 patch applied. Before trying to clean or detect any systems that may be infected with the Conficker virus, administrators must first apply the patch. Attempting to clean systems without first protecting them will only present a never-ending process of Virus removal. By applying MS08-067, administrators will then be able to start the task of scanning for infected devices and restoring them back to their desired state.
WHAT TO DO AFTER APRIL 1ST:
If you have not installed the MS08-067 patch on all systems before April 1st, and systems are infected, researchers claim that you will not be able to apply the patch to the infected systems. You will have to manually remove the virus and then apply the patch. This can leave your system open for re-attack in the timeframe between removing the virus and applying the patch.
Potential New Methods of Attack:
In addition to using internal networks as the means of attack, Conficker.C is believed to use P2P (Peer-to-Peer) networking to infect other vulnerable systems.
Find the Gaps and Close Them Before Conficker.C Causes Trouble for Your Network:
Shavlik is offering a limited-time only, free version of its NetChk Protect and NetChk Compliance software for users to protect against the Conficker virus. Corporations can use Shavlik’s non-invasive, agentless technology to assess their entire network to ensure that Microsoft patch MS08-067 is applied and that their configuration settings have been hardened according to security expert recommendations.
Here is also an interesting Q&A from F-Secure, which also seems to share a realistic perspective.
