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Yahoo TecH says: Beware of Conficker worm come April 1st. Are they kidding?
Yahoo TecH says: Beware of Conficker worm come April 1st. Are they kidding?
I pasted the whole article and the link below.
In a nutshell:
Because of the Conficker-malware one shouldn't use the Computer on April 1st. Is this true?
I have to work on my computer on Wednesday - and I might want to go online too.
Since a virus incident at the beginning of this year on our computers I have been careful to make sure all antivirus software is up-to-date.
And since you guys are my trusted source for these kind of issues I am looking forward to hearing from you if or if not I should use my computer on April 1st.
Hi PeteC,
Thanks for the link to Brian Livingston's article titled "Run a Conficker removal tool before April 1".
For those that might come across this thread I would like to answer my initial questions about the worm coming to live on April 1st:
It is not an April fools joke or a piece of sensationalism, and you should use the removal tool and run Microsoft update.
I run the suggested removal tool from BitDefender and was glad to be told there is no infection on my laptop.
Brian also mentioned "Susan Bradley's March 5 article explained how to prevent Windows' AutoRun function from exposing your machine to Conficker or any other malware."
Although Susan Bradley said in her article that she's "not yet ready to pull the fire alarm and tell everyone to disable AutoRun" for home users. I would like to disable it - I have little use for it and can easily manually start all programs or drives.
I tried following her instructions for XP home users but I can't disable Autorun.
Susan Bradley instructions (and Microsofts) say go to the Registry Editor by running "regedit" and then to "Navigate to and select the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer"
and "in the right pane, double-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun, enter 0xFF in the "Value data" field, make sure Hexadecimal is selected under Base"
"NoDriveTypeAutoRun" does not exist on my computer under this address. I have 2 items listed in this location:
1. (Default)
2. HonorAutoRunSetting
The numbering is mine, the me parenthesis Microsoft's.
Could you please tell me how to disable AutoRun?
By the way I did successfully run the Mircrosoft patch 967715.
And the latest Microsoft update (5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 build 2600) .
