The temptation is to believe that anti-virus companies sometimes let loose stories which are some little way from the truth in order to sell product. The worries started with a nonsense called the Michelangelo virus which was pushed very hard by McAfee which was founded in 1987 as McAfee Associates, named for its founder John McAfee.
McAfee swore to the author that hundreds of thousands of computers would be infected on Michelangelo’s birthday. It was total bollocks but sold a lot of McAfee software.
Now we have the idiocy of Conficker which on April Fool’s Day was supposed to lay many of the world’s computers dead in their tracks. A personal view is it is the same old nonsense which you can safely disregard.
However, Joe Stewart from SecureWorks has put together an ‘eye chart’ pictured that sources graphics from sites that Conficker would block.
You can get the chart at:
confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart
If you can’t see one or more of the images, you’re either infected or image-loading in your browser has been disabled. The test uses legitimate security Web sites that Conficker blocks. The logos are sourced remotely. If they don’t load, you may have the bug. It is almost totally certain there are none in China but it may amuse you to make the test which, incidentally, is totally safe.
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