How To Know If You Have The Conficker Worm

As you read this, the Conficker worm has probably infected more than 2 million PCs all over the world. It is one of the largest computer infections the world has ever seen. The most worrying part is that no one is quite sure what it is meant to do because once it has complete control of the PC, it can basically do almost anything that its creator or controller wants it to do.

How to know if you have the Conficker worm? There are actually some cases where there have been no visible symptoms at all. But here are some of the more obvious symptoms of an infection: -
•    Abnormally slow Internet connection over a long period of time – this means the worm is probably downloading/uploading through your connection. It may be downloading more malware; it may be spreading itself to other systems attached to your network, it can do almost anything it is asked to do.
•    You are locked out of your own account – This is quite likely to happen when a worm is active on your system
•    Security services disabled – Services like autoupdate, windows defender, error reporting, Background Intelligent Transfer Service or BITS, antivirus tools; are killed by the Conficker worm.
•    Network Congestion – The network might become congested even though no real work is being done through it, meaning the worm is spreading through the network.
•    Cannot access security sites – This is a very telling sign. If you can access other sites but not the many security sites over the Internet, it is probably Conficker who is preventing you from accessing the ways to repair your system.

As always, the best way to prevent such an infection is to keep a tab on the happenings around the world and have safe computing practices.