Conficker Worm - Still thriving on unpatched systems
Posted
Saturday, August 29, 2009 9:19 PM
by
hwaldron
I was surprised to see that "A" and "B" variants for the Conficker worm (exploits MS08-067, autorun exposures, and other vulnerabilities). While the close to 6 million IP addresses is not the true number of PCs infected, there are still a considerable number that need patching.
Conficker Still A Big Deal
http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/08/conficker_still_a_big_deal.php
Conficker Working Group - Current Statistics
http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/ANY/InfectionTracking
Conficker Infection Test - Can you see all 6 images? (if yes your PC is okay)
http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html
QUOTE: The Conficker worm outbreak seems so long ago and there's been no news about it for so long, but that doesn't mean it went away.
The Conficker Working Group, a consortium of security and related companies, continues to track the massive botnet created by the outbreak. These days it runs at around 6.2 million unique IP addresses. About 80% of these appear to be Conficker A and B, The C variant was not all that successful, because the avenues for its spread had already been largely cut off.
The fact that the numbers fluctuate within a fairly narrow range means that the botnet is pretty stable, but it's hard to say exactly what's happening. The testing measures IP addresses which means that some systems (notebooks that roam from network to network) are overcounted and some (networks with NAT) are undercounted. I think it all adds up to a very stable network; the systems that got infected in the original outbreaks are, by and large, still infected.
These tables are specifically for the A+B infections.
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Day Date Total HTTP Hits Unique IP's
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Friday 2009-08-28 329,610,182 5,768,246
Thursday 2009-08-27 369,957,038 5,882,556
Wednesday 2009-08-26 366,973,896 5,864,465
Tuesday 2009-08-25 328,376,902 5,675,661
Monday 2009-08-24 280,028,571 5,726,258
Sunday 2009-08-23 305,703,590 5,157,771
Saturday 2009-08-22 337,360,653 5,263,328
Friday 2009-08-21 334,046,979 5,649,833
Thursday 2009-08-20 347,347,632 5,723,993