OK Corral Shootout Coming To Cyberspace On April 1st, 2009

For those who may not be familiar with the tale of the OK Corral, it happened back in 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona. The famous gunfight featured a host of characters with Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp, plus Doc Holiday on one side. These four went up against fought the Clantons and McLaurys at what was known as the OK Corral. Accounts vary as to what actually happened but all agree that it was a bloody day.

So we now have another shootout brewing, but this time the battle will take place on the Internet. On one side there is Microsoft who is leading a group of security professionals. On the other side are the people who wrote the Conficker bug that is getting ready to explode on April 1st, 2009. It is estimated that the virus has infected some 3 to 12 million computer systems with its payload. 

In an article from USA Today it states that there is little the good guys can do to stop the Conficker bug.

Conficker’s controllers have set a date for what amounts to a cyber-shootout at the OK Corral. Next Wednesday — April Fools’ Day — millions of infected PCs, called bots, will begin reporting for further instructions, presumably to begin spreading spam, stealing data or carrying out online scams. And there appears to be little the good guys can do to cut off such communications.

“We have not yet begun to feel the real impact of Conficker,” says Paul Henry, researcher at security firm Lumension. “We may soon be at the whim of those in control of what has emerged as a formidable army of infected machines.”

Vintage worm

Conficker requires no action on the part of the PC user to spread. It’s a throwback to self-replicating worms that scanned the Internet for PCs displaying known — and unpatched — Windows security holes.

Now here comes the fun part. Since April 1st is known as April Fools Day, this may turn out to be nothing more than a hoax. Or is it? 

One of the simplest ways to avoid infection is to not log onto the Internet on April 1st. I have switched over to using Google’s Chrome browser since it seems the most secure browser as of today. Even the hackers gave up trying to break Chrome since it uses a ’sandbox’ approach. 

What are you doing to protect your computer just in case the worm does attack?

Comments welcome.

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