Conficker Botnet Preparing Massive Attack?

The nasty Conficker worm, which didn’t inflict troubles to PC users on April 1 as announced, is stirring again with a new variant that has begun updating the infected machines with a mysterious data package. 

The antivirus and web content security company Trend Micro noted that the worm, which is believed to have infected millions of PCs across the globe, has kicked off to download encrypted software to the infected machines; however, the content of the payload hasn’t been identified yet. 

In its report, Trend Micro revealed that it had found hints “that cybercriminals behind the notorious Conficker worm may finally be gearing up for more serious attacks..”. 

However, the company has noticed some ruckus in form of increased peer-to-peer activity between compromised machines and a system, believed to be hosted in Korea, for supporting their claims. 

However, according to another security firm Symantec, the new variant of the worm, dubbed as ‘Conficker.e”, is downloading and installing Waledac malware, a notable botnet that could affect the victim’s system seriously.

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Microsoft is helping users to counter this nasty worm by keeping its Windows website updated, and along the same line, the software maker asked users to patch their systems with the latest Windows updates to stay away from any sort of potential troubles. 

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