'Impossible to know' what massive botnet will do April 1, researchers say
Security researchers are in the dark about what will happen next week when the newest variant of Conficker, 2009's biggest worm by a mile, begins trying to contact its controllers.
"It's impossible to know until we see something that has a clear profit motive," said Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks Inc. and a noted botnet researcher.
PCs infected with Conficker.c, the third version of the worm that first appeared late last year, will use a new communication scheme on April 1 to establish a link to the command-and-control servers operated by the hackers who seeded the malware. The date is hard-coded into the worm, which in turn polls any of a number of major Web sites, including Yahoo, for the date, said Stewart.
More: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9130228
Security researchers are in the dark about what will happen next week when the newest variant of Conficker, 2009's biggest worm by a mile, begins trying to contact its controllers.
"It's impossible to know until we see something that has a clear profit motive," said Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks Inc. and a noted botnet researcher.
PCs infected with Conficker.c, the third version of the worm that first appeared late last year, will use a new communication scheme on April 1 to establish a link to the command-and-control servers operated by the hackers who seeded the malware. The date is hard-coded into the worm, which in turn polls any of a number of major Web sites, including Yahoo, for the date, said Stewart.
More: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9130228
