Conflicker worm, any information?

Saw this and got curious... Will it also infect other platforms besides Microsoft?

Almost a year after it was first detected, the Conficker computer virus is still baffling security experts who say it poses the largest threat of cyber crime. - - They admit they are no closer to finding a cure or who is behind it, and Microsoft continues to offer a $300,000 reward for anyone who can help. - - More than 5 million computers worldwide have been infected by the worm since it was discovered late last year. - - Rodney Joffe, the director of US communications company Neustar, says the virus is nearly impossible to remove from infected computers. - - He said the virus creates cryptographic links between infected computers which are controlled by an equally malicious and distant server. - - "We've not been able to crack that, and in fact it's using the very latest cryptographic techniques, something called MD6, which is something that we don't expect to be able to crack for many years," Mr Joffe said. - - He says the people behind the virus can do whatever they like once the computer has been infected, but adds that the latest anti-virus software should prevent your computer from being infected. - - "We'd been hoping this was perhaps an experiment that had got out of hand. It's now clear to us that it's a whole lot more than that," he said. - - With the virus infecting public school systems in the US, councils in the UK and the French navy, Mr Joffe says they are losing the battle against the zombie virus. - - "The people behind this are as smart as we are, if not smarter," Mr Jofee said. - - "Each time we've actually taken steps to defend ourselves, they've modified the way they operate and they're now at a point where they're using something called peer to peer." - - He said infected computers are slowly migrating to the later version of the virus which is much more difficult to interrupt.

 

not in its current form, it exploits vulnerability in ms netbios on MS OS there is a patch available. Your author is very sensationalist

its not impossible to get rid but yes difficult. its a well written worm probably aims to avoid detection by most common antivirus tools as well.

Other OS aren't usually affected by mainstream attacks due to the low volume of users and their (often) better knowledge of their system making a bot net possible but not likely to be sustainable.

The botmasters have not been discovered but the eariler versions of the worm called home and these servers have been traced but are anonymous and hosted in countries without internet laws. The new version can use p2p so its next to impossible to establish identity of the botmasters.

MS will allways be a soft target because of the mainstream users complete lack of understanding of their machine. A good firewall with solid rules is a better protection than any antivirus software but this involves you having an understanding of what things need access to where for correct operation.