Conficker virus hits Manchester Police computers

Conficker virus hits Manchester Police computers

news.bbc.co.uk

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has been cut off from a national criminal database for more than three days because of a computer virus. IT experts disconnected GMP from the Police National Computer (PNC) after finding the conficker virus on Friday.

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Im not clued up on conficker, its origins etc, I just remember reading somewhere it could be the biggest threat to the net. What damage would it be capable of on police computers? and why wasn't there sufficiant protection? This will probably mean a new multimillion pound system will be introduced i reckon.

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 2-2-2010 by citizens]

reply to post by citizens


Yes that is the whole point of viruses, to destroy and then force people to accept new systems, or basically accept anything which is thrown at them due to fear.

Great find

Originally posted by citizens
What damage would it be capable of on police computers? and why wasn't there sufficiant protection?
[edit on 2-2-2010 by citizens]

Conficker, for the most part, does denial of service. It prevents a variety of different things depending on which of the variants it is. It also makes itself hard to remove by terminating any program it detects as an antivirus/anti-malware.

There are of course ways around this thankfully, such as, for example renaming the anti-malware program to a .bat file. As for sufficient protection? Well of course it goes without saying that all the computers there should have anti-viruses, however, Conficker can get onto your system simply through an infected USB device combined with the Autoplay confuction being turned on on the computer it's put into. One weak link and bam infected.

More info about Conficker:

Microsoft Support

Wikipedia on Conficker

Good..... I hope it infects the whole system. We don't need police, they are not required to protect us and usually make situtions worse....not to mention all the illegal laws they impose on the people from out of control power hungry satan worshipers.

If you see all images, you're safe...

www.confickerworkinggroup.org...

I can not understand this virus attack on police computers. Was there no security on those computer or was it not managed well?
[Snip]