The most surprising thing about the worm found in Philip Porras's digital Petri dish in the past 18 months was how quickly it grew. The first time he saw it was on the 20th of November in 2008. Security experts across the globe were not aware of the incident until that day did.
A worm is an incredibly effective little bit of information in computer code that is designed to be slipped into the computer to set up a shop without drawing attention and do what this particular one was well at: replicate itself. A majority of what honeypots are able to snare is routine, and the viruses have been a source of frustration for users everywhere over the last fifteen years or so which illustrates the fact that every new technology however useful to humans, can eventually be used to harm. The virus is responsible for things as spamming your inboxes with penis-enlargement offers and million dollar investment options in Nigeria. Certain malware is created to destroy or damage your computer. Once you've been infected you'll be able to recognize the cause. Computer viruses that are more sophisticated, such as the most effective biological viruses, as well as this latest virus, are engineered to be stealthy. It is only the best technically proficient and vigilant computer users would realize that they had logged into. Porras is the operator of a huge honeynet run by SRI International in Menlo Park, California, noticed the first infection and then a subsequent infection. And then another, and another. The worm, once encased within a computer, started constantly scanning for new computers to infiltrate, and it spread rapidly. It exploited a weakness within Microsoft Windows, particularly Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, which are the most widely used operating systems around the globe. As a result, it quickly found new hosts. As the number of hosts increased and the frequency of repeated infections within Porras's honeynet increased. Within a matter of hours, duplicates the worm began to appear fast enough to push other malware, which is the standard everyday wares away. In the same way that the typical inflow happens like a flow from a tap but this one appeared to be like a blast from a fire water hose. It was coming from computer addresses across the globe. Then Porras started to receive messages from other people in his field , who had the same experience. Because of the instantaneous and omnidirectional characteristics of the Internet it was impossible to determine where the worm been born. In the course of a few hours, it was everywhere. When you delved deeper it became apparent that its voracity wasn't the beginning of its extraordinary features. Different labs have assigned names to the worm from different labs.
Microsoft security programmers played around with the letters before coming in with Conficker that stuck, partly since the word "fucker" is German term meaning "motherfucker," and the malware was definitely one of them. In the same time Conficker was spreading in honeypots also infiltrating personal computers around the world, an estimated 500,000 computers in its first week.