Salvagers Tech Blog
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Fickle-Minded Conficker
Conficker is the Internet worm that has grabbed and held the media’s attention as April 1st approached. However, despite the news and hype about Conficker, many have remained in the dark with regards to the workings and what Conficker can do. In this week’s tech post, Salvagers.Net takes a closer look into the infamous worm dissect it.

What is Conficker?
Conficker, discovered in early October 2008, is a worm that spreads through the Internet by exploiting a vulnerability in a network service in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 Beta. It is not clear whether Windows 7 is affected by the Conficker worm as the Windows 7 Beta was not publicly available until February 2009. A second variant of the worm, known as Conficker B had the new ability to propagate over the LAN through removable media and network shares, was discovered in December 2008. By January 2009, the number of infected computers had almost hit 15 million worldwide.

Symptoms of Infection
Account lockout policies being reset automatically
Microsoft Windows services such as Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Services (BITS), Windows Defender and Windows Error Reporting disabled.
Domain Controllers responding slowly to client requests
Congestions on LANs
Web sites related to antivirus software or the Windows Update service becoming inaccessible
User accounts locked out

Removal of the Conficker Worm
While Microsoft has released a removal guide for the worm, it also recommends the usage of the latest Malicious Software Removal Tool, then to apply the patch released to prevent re-infection. On the other hand, several antivirus vendors have also released detection updates to their products to remove the worm.

Security News of the Week
Printer and File Sharing is enabled by default on Windows Vista or XP for the local network, which means that if your local network is broadcast on a open WiFi with no encryption security, your files and printers are open to theft and privacy invasion. To prevent this problem, simply unbind the sharing from WiFi or disabled file and print sharing.

Windows Tip of the Week
In Windows Vista, there's a new Power button in the Start Menu. By default, this button will put your PC into Sleep mode when clicked. But you can change its behavior. The fastest way is to open the Start Menu and type power in Start Menu Search to find the Power Options application. Then, in the left column, select Choose what the power button does. You'll be presented with a UI for choosing between various power management options, including Do Nothing, Sleep, and Shut down.

Mac Tip of the Week
f you want to customize the items in your toolbar (and there’s nothing wrong with that), just Command-Option-click the little white pill-shaped button at the top right of your window’s title bar, and the Customize Toolbar dialog will appear, right there in your window. Now you can just drag-and-drop icons onto the toolbar.

How-To of the Week
Ever thought of switching your Mac to a new laptop or just to transfer purchased songs from your Macbook to iMac or vice versa? Here’s how you can do that with the Mac and Windows.
Posted by Salvagers Blogger @ 10:21 PM
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