" Danger, Danger Will Robinson "

EMERGENCY!EMERGENCY!

**COMPUTER SAFETY ALERT**

Beware! Biggest Computer Virus Ever?

"This one is nasty. Very, very nasty. Called "Conficker" or "Downadup," this new computer worm has infected more than 9 million computers and is spreading at the rate of 1 million a day, according to the software protection firm, F-Secure. "This is enormous; possibly the biggest virus we have ever seen," software security specialist David Perry of Trend Micro told Agence France Presse".

"Here's the real puzzler: So far, the virus has done no damage. Does that mean it's impotent, or does it portend a far more nefarious outcome? It could just be waiting to detonate, or it could be a test run by cybercriminals intent on profiting from the weakness in the future. "I think the bad guys are field testing a new technology," Perry told AFP. "If Conficker proves to work well, they could go out and sell malware (malicious software) to people. There is a huge market for selling criminal malware."

"The worm is self-replicating and spreads on networks and computers that do not have the security patches for Windows RPC Server Service. It can infect machines from the Internet or even by hiding on USB memory sticks that carry data from one computer to another, reports AFP. Once Conficker is on a computer, it's almost impossible to remove. "Here we are with a big, big outbreak, and they keep revamping their methodology to increase the size of it," Perry warned to AFP. "They could be growing this huge botnet to slice it up and sell it on the criminal market." If that happened, the infected computers would be "zombie"machines that would do the cybercriminals' bidding".

"One very troubling "feature" of this virus: It uses the brute force of computing power to try to crack the passwords of the machine being attacked. "That is something never seen before, and I find it disturbing," Perry told AFP. He advises people to choose better passwords. Mix in numbers, punctuation marks and upper-case letters to make them harder to deduce. Also, record your passwords in a paper notebook. "No hacker in the world can hack the written page locked away in your office," he told AFP".

( Blog Title Borrowed from TV Classic LOST IN SPACE , Thank you Robot )