Conficker

I’ve got to admit, as a Mac owner, I’m feeling a little smug about the Conficker virus that’s been doing the rounds.

From what I’ve read, though, it’s done nothing major, yet, but does seems – if I’ve understood the various news reports, correctly – to be upgrading itself to be harder to remove.

To try and sum up what I’ve learnt, though, Conficker C – also known as ‘kido’ and ‘downadup’ – is designed to connect a large group of machines together and turn them into what’s called a ‘botnet’.   A group of compromised computer’s, that can be controlled by someone else for their often criminal, and certainly malicious own ends.   You can read a better explanation here, by the way.

One thing I have noticed from the BBC news report on the worm, though, is that a lot of House of Commons machines have been infected, as have machines used by the military forces of the UK, France, and Germany.

I do know that there’s a lot less of this on PC’s running the various shades of Linux, and – as far as I know – none on recent versions of Mac OS X.   That’ll possibly change, as both proliferate, but for the moment, I’m surprised that the House of Commons, and the British, German, and French military forces, haven’t made the switch to Linux.   I’ve put some relevant articles about that, here and here.

But computers are like any other tool.   The security features on them are getting better.   But they are only protected if we – those who use them – make sure we use that protection.