*I was going to post this in another thread, but didn't want to take his help thread off topic*

Can I say something about Conficker that's been bothering me lately?

Okay, so for some time now, I've been doing in-home and small business tech support, and I see a lot of infected machines. What kills me about Conficker is that everyone is so incredibly freaked out about it (and the media has helped in making that happen), but as of yet, to my knowledge it hasn't done anything other than update its self (and block Windows update and some antivirus sites). Granted, there's a definite possibility that it could be a huge problem, especially seeing as how it's infected so many computers, but it's relatively easy to remove and I believe the only necessary precautions are to run Windows Update.

On the other hand, you have whatever virus killed Glenn's (gbeer's) friend's computer. As far as we can tell, it has effectively killed the computer with no hope but to reformat.

The most insidious offender that I've seen is the one that I can only name "Antivirus 2009" (or Antivirus 360 or Antivirus 1 or WinPC Defender). It tries to disguise its self as an antivirus application, and once it gets on there, it's a devil to uninstall. Previously, Malwarebytes could get rid of it, but I was very scared the other day to come across a new variant of it (that WinPC Defender I mentioned) which specifically blocked Malwarebytes from running. I had to actually rename the installer, the folder it installs to, and the executable in order to get it to run. And once I got rid of it, it had dug so deep that the internet connection was shot with no hope of repair.

IMO, people aren't freaked out enough about the viruses that are out there and already doing damage. For the most part, malware writers have gotten good at hiding on people's system, in almost a symbiotic relationship, and the last thing they want to do is harm the computer. But lately I think there's been a resurgence of the nasty kind of virus, and I just think that Conficker is not the one to worry about, at least not yet.

What say you good people?