Virus, worm, spyware, adware. What is the common in them? They all infect our personal computers, making it malfunction or stealing vital data that are needed to manage the everyday life of our businesses. These malicious softwares are all referred to as malware nowadays, and they are the greatest enemies of the major companies of our time.
Since last October a worm called Downadup or Conficker started circulating in the networks looking for potential computers to infect. It is said that so far more than ten million computers have been affected by this dangerous entity.
Software giant Microsoft offered a reward of 250,000 dollars for those who find the creator of this worm. They believe that this time it is serious and the creator of such thing must be brought to justice. A reward as enormous as Microsoft's offer can only indicate that the creation of the worm is regarded as a criminal act.
As George Stathakopulos from Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group told BBC "People who write this malware have to be held accountable. Our message is very clear - whoever wrote this caused significant pain to our customers and we are sending a message that we will do everything we can to help with your arrest."
As far as I know Microsoft publishes new updates that are downloadable via their Microsoft Update Service on the first Tuesday of every month. However, recently my computer has downloaded an update for the operation system's so-called malicious tools component. Now we know that those computers that are up-to-date have nothing to fear.
It turns out that Conficker spreads not only through networks but even on single USB memory drives. The worm struggles to find out any account name and a password along with it so as to infiltrate a network. It either steals important data or lets its creators to further infect the computers in question with their botnets. An infected machine can also be used to attack another PC or to simply start sending hundreds or even thousands of spams. Fighting such a malware can really cause a headache to various network administrators out there.
Not only did Microsoft offer a reward but they decided to cooperate with other security companies, internet companies, domain name providers and many other institutions in order to fight Downadup. According to BBC even the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security are involved in the pursuit.
Note that this is not the first reward Microsoft offers. The same amount was already put up to find the creators of such threats as Blaster, MyDoom, Sobig and Sasser. So far only the creator of Sasser has been found and arrested.
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