Hope you’ve all seen this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7832652.stm

and been here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0D5F9B6E-9265-44B9-A376-2067B73D6A03&displaylang=en

and patched your computers!

(Maybe not Vista users though: not sure)

Just a thought…

This patch is downloaded as part of the automatic update.

I certainly would have the automatic update running each day, isn’t this normal activity?

I should certainly hope so!

I certainly would have the automatic update running each day, isn’t this normal activity?

Only if you’re one of the 25% of home users using a legal copy thats not avoiding auto updates due to the copy protection / gen advantage issue 🙂

And had quite an effect on Sheffield NHS networks:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/20/sheffield_conficker/

It exploits lots of really poor practice on people’s networks to spread:

– not bothering with updates
– not bothering with MS security bulletins (or not taking “out of band security update” seriously)
– weak passwords, especially for local admin accounts
– people having domain admin accounts for everyday use
– allowing USB storage including autorun

Anyone who’s a home user who’s been running auto updates (this was patched back in October) should be just fine. Still worth having decent passwords though.

Only if you’re one of the 25% of home users using a legal copy thats not avoiding auto updates due to the copy protection / gen advantage issue

I am proud of my pucker XP Pro license. It will keep me virus free anyway!

I used to have a corp key generator but it stopped working so I though £70 for an XP Pro license was money well spent!

Home users don’t generally have a problem as most have Win Update on.

Companies who are slow to test & release updates could be stuffed!

Big names affected so far

Simon_G – the effect on Sheffield has been overstated.

I am proud of my pucker XP Pro license. It will keep me virus free anyway

funniest thing I have read all day – all it gives you is an OS full of holes and the vague hope that microsoft will get round to fixing them before you get done over.

On a Windows system an up to date AV is essential if not pull out the network connection.

I will sit here and be smug on Linux for a bit and forget to panic