Conficker's April Fool
Conficker's expected April 1st mass activity seems to be passing without any significant problems, at least it has done so in the countries already through April 1.
Perhaps the biggest April Fool's joke was that many thought there was going to be major problems on April 1. Not all computer experts feared the worst, or even major problems today, despite what many media sources tried to suggest.
For those systems that have activated the new version of Conficker, the definite arrival of April 1 via GMT is also not seeing any new activity of note.
For a worm that doesn't seem to be doing very much at the moment, besides make it harder to stop it and prevent from updating itself. This is about the level of activity that it has demonstrated since it first arrived last year. For a worm that originally spread via a single vulnerability, and which arrived after Microsoft patched it, it continues to spread and cause concern.
The flurry of activity surrounding just how far and fast the worm is spreading suggests that the rate of application of critical system patches isn't as high as it should be, and that for systems that are patched against the vulnerability, that there are still several weak security practices that are common enough to allow the worm easy room to spread.
Despite Microsoft claiming that Conficker is not a "broad threat to the Internet", the level of activity and concern surrounding it certainly places it into that category.
1 April 2009
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