The Conficker Virus -- How to protect yourself

By now I’m sure most of you have heard of the virus Conficker. It’s been on 60 Minutes, CNN and about every other NEWS source over the past week. I have had a lot of questions about how to secure home computers against the Conficker virus so here’s a list of a few things that you can do to help protect yourself.

1. Make sure that you have Anti-Virus software installed on your computer and that it’s up-to-date. The up-to-date part is just as important as having the software on your computer. If your computer doesn’t have an Anti-Virus program installed there are a few free ones out there.

http://free.avg.com/
http://www.free-av.com/
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

The above free Anti-Virus programs aren't to bad but if you can afford the money I would highly recommend the following two products. They are top notch and unlike AV programs like Symantec, McAfee and the above free ones they will not slow your computer down.

http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/home-home-office/vipre/
http://www.eset.com/

2. Make sure that your computer is up-to-date on patches. Microsoft releases updates every month to patch holes in its software. Virus exploit those holes to get on your computer.


The easiest way to patch your computer is to open Internet Explorer, Click the Tools Menu then choose Windows Update. Follow the prompts to update your computer.


3. To quickly test if you have to Conficker virus open a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox and go to www.symantec.com or www.McAfee.com. The virus will not let you go to those sites. if you have problems getting there, there is a good chance that you have the virus.


4. If you think that you have the virus the follow website has a list of tools that you can download to run and clean your computer. http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=ANY.RepairTools


60 Minutes had an interesting segment on the virus. I have attached a link to the video if your interested.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=3036


If you have questions email me at mplahtinsky @ gmail.com

DNS Tools

I use to use dnsstuff.com to do external DNS testing. About a year ago they started charging for their services.

Here is a list of sites that offer similar tools.

http://www.iptools.com
http://www.sort-dns.com
http://www.nwtools.com

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/

Download Manager

Ever have problems downloading files from the net. I recently had to download a program from a bad connection that kept dropping. Every time the connection dropped I had to restart the download from the beginning.

Get it right has a great download manager. It's not free ($19.99) but if you do a lot of downloading and are having connection problems you should definitely check it out.

http://getright.com/

RichCopy

A GUI version of Robocopy written by microsoft.


http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx?pr=blog

Make your own WiFi Directional Antenna

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

Malwarebytes

Malwarebytes is one of the best free tools out there to clean virus and malware off of infected computers.

Download link -- http://www.malwarebytes.org/
Definition db link -- http://www.gt500.org/malwarebytes/database.jsp

Free CD Burning Software

Both of these should work with all 32bit and 64bit versions of windows.

CDBurnerXP - http://cdburnerxp.se/

ImgBurn - http://www.imgburn.com/