Fergie's Tech Blog

Conficker Group Says Worm 4.6 Million Strong

Robert McMillan writes on InfoWorld:

Security experts say that the Conficker worm has infected an awful lot of computers, making it the largest "botnet" of hacked computers on the planet. The thing they can't seem to agree on, however, is exactly how many people have been hit.

The group of researchers that has been most closely tracking -- and battling -- the worm has now released its own estimate of Conficker's size. According to data compiled by the Conficker Working Group, Conficker has been spotted on just under 4.6 million unique IP addresses. Its earlier A and B variants account for the lion's share of that -- 3.4 million IP addresses -- with the more-recent C variant spotted at 1.2 million addresses.

The countries measuring the largest number of infections for all variants are China, Brazil ,and Russia.

Conficker has been infecting Windows machines since October, but in recent weeks, it has been getting a lot of attention as a newer version of the worm, Conficker.C, has updated the way it looks for instructions, making it much harder to stop.

posted by Fergie @ 4/14/2009 05:51:00 PM