Conficker Launches Fake Antivirus Scam

Wow, it’s been a busy week for the Conficker worm. It was just a few hours ago that we posted the Conficker Eye Chart that you could use to see if your computer had been infected.

Now comes word that the Conficker worm “activated” over the weekend, as infected machines began to blast out spam messages and run phony antivirus software which tried to get users to pay for its “services.”

Conficker is now sporting a new bit of malware, called Waledac, which can send spam message and harvest other users’ personal data. One computer that was being tracked by Kaspersky Labs rapidly fired off in excess of 40,000 spam messages in about a 12-hour period. That means that the infected network could be capable of blasting out 400 billion spam messages in one day.

The Conficker worm also downloaded and launched a scam antivirus program called Spyware Protect 2009.

Spyware Protect 2009 says it can identify many infected files and completely remove them for the low low cost of just $49.95. Kaspersky’s antivirus blog has photos of the phony program in action.

In another Conficker development, the Associated Press is reporting that the University of Utah’s entire computer network is now completely infected by the worm, including some machines at the school’s hospital facilities.

The Conficker scareis far from over.

Symantec has released very easy and free tool dedicated to removing Conficker.

Just download this file to your machine, follow the steps, and you should be in the clear. By the way, if you can’t access the Symantec website, that’s a pretty good indication that your PC is infected.

We also highly recommend that you visit the Amazon Security Solutions page now to get everything you need to KEEP your computer clear once you’ve gotten rid of Conlicker. There you can compare Norton, McAfee, BitDefender and even Kaspersky Anti-Virus. If you are concerned about malware on your computer, Amazon Security Solutions is the only page you need.