Dissecting the Conficker Worm

The Conficker worm seems to have wrecked havoc on the Internet over the last couple of months. F-secure estimates that there may be over 9 million infections around the globe and the numbers are steadily growing. Currently, there are 4 known variants of the worm - Conficker A, B, C and D. The interesting aspect about Conficker seems to be that it is not hard coded with any "final objective" such as a DDoS attack or keystroke logging of sensitive information. Instead, the worm is programmed to phone home to get new instructions. In this video, security researchers from F-Secure speak at the Species Conference held in Amsterdam in Feb 2009 and discuss the functionality of the Conficker worm in great detail.

Vivek Ramachandran is a security evangelist and has been working in computer security related fields for the past 7 years. In 2007, Vivek spoke at world renowned conferences Defcon (WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon (The Caffe Latte Attack). The discovery of the Caffe Latte Attack was covered by CBS5 news, BBC online, Network World etc news agencies.In 2006, Vivek was announced as one of winners of the Microsoft Security Shootout contest held in India among 65,000 participants. He has also been a recipient of a Team Achievement at Cisco Systems for his work on 802.1x and Port Security modules on the Catalyst 6500 switches. Currently he spends all of his time maintaining Security- Freak.Net , SecurityTube.Net and is the co-founder of Axonize. Vivek, is a Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.You can contact him at vivek[at]securitytube.net