Nearly Two Months In: What's the Latest with Conficker?

In case you thought things had settled down with Conficker, you're wrong.

Just because it's nearly two months after the official Conficker activiation date, and just because the main stream media isn't talking about it anymore, doesn't mean it's not a real threat.

In fact, Computerworld, one of our favorite resources for computer security news, brings word of it in this statistic: 50,000 computers/day are still being infected with Conficker. [Full details on it from them: here.]

We learned via Computerworld that Symantec, like us, made mention of the media hype dying down but Conficker still being alive and well, saying in a recent Conficker blog:

"Much of the media hype seems to have died down around Conficker/Downadup, but it is still out there spreading far and wide."

The folks at Symantec even include a world map of Conficker infections.

What this means is that the chances of getting infected by this virus/worm are just as bad as ever. Even if fully 50% of the Conficker worms are caught within a week that still means 175,000 new computers are being infected weekly.

At this point, having covered the Conficker worm (and about removing the Conficker worm) extensively here at our site, it should come as no surprise that this worm is no joke, but what's amazing to me is that after so much has been said about such malware that still so many people go without antivirus protection. Even without our coupons, getting the best antivirus / security software out there for Windows isn't that expensive.

Full sticker price of top-rated antivirus software like, VIPRE or BitDefender is under $30; with our coupons it's even less. Even if the *only* worm in the world were Conficker, which (obviously) it isn't, $30 seems like a small price to pay to avoid the problem altogether, and in the case of Conficker, it's clear, it's not going away anytime soon.