WORST VIRUS IN YEARS INFECTS 9 MILLION PCs

A computer Virus attack that has- till date-infected nearly 9 million Windows PCs is one of the worst in years, this fact has been revealed by F-secure an
internet security firm.
The Worm Downadup or Conficker, was unleashed two years ago, the experts said. "The number of infections through this virus is skyrocketing," Toni Koivunen, an F-secure researcher, said in an entry to the company's security lab blog. "From an estimated 2.4 million infected machines to over 8.9 million during the four days. That's just amazing."
Computer users have little to fear if they keep their PCs patched with latest Microsoft security fixes, but microsoft says at least one third of PCs have
not yet been updated.
"We haven't seen outbreaks of this scale in many years,"F-secure's lead researcher Mikko Hypponen said.
Microsoft says the worm expolits a bug in the Windows server service used by Windows 2000, Xp, Vista, Server 200 and Server 2008.
It works by searching for a windows file called 'Service.exe' and then becomes part of that code. Once it's embedded in a PC, Downadup generates a list of
possible domains, selects one and then uses that domain to reach a malicious server from which it downloads additional malware to install on the hijacked
computer.
The latest version of virus is particularly nasty since it uses a complicated algorithm to create hundreds of new domains, making it much harder for
security experts to shut it down.