What a great way to sum up my last couple of posts – the Conficker media frenzy, and social aspects of web attacks. You can’t come up with these things anymore… Seems (for now) that the only real thing that came out of the Conficker issue is the fact that INFECTED machines started to look for info on a bunch of additional domains.
Side effect #1 of the media frenzy is the probable increase in the number of people buying security (AV) software (remember who was pitching the scare the hardest… see the ad just before the 60 minute spot on the previous post, and check out the scrutiny which McAfee was under at ZDNet).
Side effect #2 leads us to my previous-previous post and – you guessed it right, Rogue AV are taking advantage of the fact that people are searching for security solutions to protect themselves from Conficker, and manipulate users to install the rogue software… Classic social engineering meets security scare.
Bottom line (which should have been on every Conficker related story waaay before any advice on AV software): PATCH. Conficker can’t touch you if your Windows is up-to-date. Patched? Good, now go get an AV!
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