Operation
Although almost all of the advanced malware techniques used by Conficker have seen past use or are well known to researchers, the virus' combined use of so many has made it unusually difficult to eradicate. The virus' unknown authors are also believed to be tracking anti-malware efforts from network operators and law enforcement and have regularly released new variants to close the virus' own vulnerabilities.
Five variants of the Conficker virus are known and have been dubbed Conficker A, B, C, D and E. They were discovered 21 November 2008, 29 December 2008, 20 February 2009, 4 March 2009 and 7 April 2009, respectively. The Conficker Working Group uses namings of A, B, B++, C, and E for the same variants respectively. This means that (CWG) B++ is equivalent to (MSFT) C and (CWG) C is equivalent to (MSFT) D.
Variant | Detection date | Infection vectors | Update propagation | Self-defense | End action |
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Conficker A | 2008-11-21 |
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Conficker B | 2008-12-29 |
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Conficker C | 2009-02-20 |
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Conficker D | 2009-03-04 | None |
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Conficker E | 2009-04-07 |
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Read more about this topic: Conficker
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