A recent worm, known as Conficker or Downadup, is spreading fast. As many as nine million computers may already be infected. It affects PCs running Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
The UK Government’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure issued an alert on January 16th, which we published the same day via the GetSafeOnline.org alerts and warning system.
The worm exploits a problem which Microsoft fixed in October but a large number of PCs remain unpatched, leaving them vulnerable. This underlines the importance of keeping PCs patched and secure.
GetSafeOnline.org recommends:
- To reduce the risk of infection, make sure your computer has the latest updates
- Sign up to receive future alerts and warnings via email or RSS feed
- Use strong passwords to prevent the worm from spreading via network connections
- For technically-minded users, consider disabling the autorun feature on your PC
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perhaps 5. should be : ‘for non-technically-minded users, consider asking your techie friend to do it’ to make sure they don’t get left behind. i know, we may laugh at the thought, but hey, my mom probably wouldn’t do anything about this unless i specifically told her how to.