Conficker (AKA Downup, Downaup and Kido) is an infamous viral worm the exploited MS08-67 vulnerability of Microsoft Operating Systems. Discovered in November 2008, this work took advantage of a hole in the network service of the operating system. Diffusion could also happen through storage devices (disks, USB drives, etc..) and the higher the administrative privileges of the infected user, the more dangerous the infection is.

Some of the main consequences of an attack are the loss of scheduled backups, deletion of restore points and the violation of network connections. The work also uses the infected machine to take control of the other devices on the network.

The estimation of the New York Times, consistent with F-Secure’s, is about 9 million PCs infected in January 2009, used to create a huge botnet exploiting Windows PCs without security patches (which were released in 2008).