5. Conficker (2008)
Conficker was spotted in November 21, 2008, the worm can infect other computers across a network and it can fix the bug as other worms trying the same are locked out. The next day, Microsoft had strongly suggested to its users to apply immediate updates to counteract vulnerabilities however, machines that were infected with Conficker A were activated. It then started to use different sets of 250 domains every day for other instructions. At that time, 500,000 computers are already thought to be infected with this worm.
A few days, after a website, trafficconverter was contacted by infected pc for any update but the file is not there. Exactly, two month later, census revealed that around 1.5 million machines are infected.
The virus did not stopped there from spreading as another variant was found in January 2009. In fact, the MoD of United Kingdom was infected and it had taken two weeks before they were able to clear the damage.
In February 2009, number of machines that were infected by Conficker had exploded and that millions were affected. In that same month, the Microsoft had announced $250,000 as a reward to any information which can be given about creators of Conficker.
In March, another variant Conficker C was spotted and it had tried all infected pc to get the latest variant.
The worst was not over, in April 1, Conficker C had connected to domains for the instructions. On that April fool’s day, around two million computers were infected with this variant.
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