US-CERT is aware of public reports indicating a widespread infection of the Conficker worm, which can infect a Microsoft Windows system from a thumb drive, a network share, or directly across the network if the host is not patched with MS08-067.

The presence of a Conficker infection may be detected if a user is unable to navigate to the following websites:
http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=conficker_worm&inid=us_ghp+link_conficker_worm
http://www.mcafee.com

If a user is unable to reach either of these websites, the Conficker infection may be indicated (the most current variant of Conficker interferes with queries for these sites, preventing a user from visiting them). If a Conficker infection is suspected, the infected system should be removed from the network. Major anti-virus vendors and Microsoft have released several free tools that can verify the presence of a Conficker infection and remove the worm. Instructions for manually removing a Conficker infection from a system have been published by Microsoft in Knowledgebase Article 962007.

US-CERT encourages users to prevent a Conficker infection by ensuring all systems have the MS08-067 patch (part of Security Update KB958644, which was published by Microsoft in October 2008), disabling AutoRun functionality (see US-CERT Technical Cyber Security Alert TA09-020A), and maintaining up-to-date antivirus software.

US-CERT will provide additional information as it becomes available.

Read more: US-CERT Current Activity