Robert Pogson

Thanks to M$’s incredibly fragile OS, Conficker is set to detonate on April 1. 12 million machines times, say, 1 megabit/s, is … 12000 gigabit/s, perhaps a giga-email/s.

All the security-through-obscurity/auto-updates/patches in the world cannot protect that other OS from malware and still people buy it. Perhaps this one will be bad enough that people change.

The way to fight malware is to keep stuff simple and clean so that the vulnerable interfaces are humanly countable and can be re-enforced. Instead, M$ adds feature after feature telling customers that they must buy another licence to use the newest features. The world is so tired of spam and malware that many are turning to GNU/Linux in 2009 partly to escape this stuff and partly because there is good software with good features in GNU/Linux.

Just like M$’s feature-ridden OS, Conficker is featureful malware. It has armor, unpredictability, diversity, counter-measures and now it has untold thousands of PCs waiting for April 1. Perhaps we will get some early warning of what it plans when clocks set wrong start to go early. Perhaps nothing at all will happen. Perhaps we will be without e-mail for a week until every IP running Conficker is blocked. Perhaps levels of spam will reach new records.

When the stuff happens, do not scrap your PC to buy a newer, more secure one. Chuck that other OS, not your machine. M$ and its partners laugh all the way to the bank when your PC quits working. Many take it in for service, meaning a re-installation of the same garbage that allowed the infections to take over. Many buy a new PC. Either way, the evil empire profits and nothing will change. You have to decide to end life on the Wintel treadmill. Break free. Enjoy your PC. Have it work for you, not against you. Use Free Software. It is designed to work, not fail at the drop of a hat. It is not designed to make someone rich at your expense.

Instead of a nightmare, have a pleasant and efficient experience with GNU/Linux. This year I have introduced hundreds of students to GNU/Linux. Every one was impressed by the speed and simplicity of the software. They are even more impressed to learn that I have never seen malware take over a PC running GNU/Linux in eight years on hundreds of machines. In that same period I have seen dozens of instances of malware even on patched systems because the malware is out there and operating long before the patch can be created.

Students are shocked to see the difference in speed between GNU/Linux and XP running on identical hardware side by side. They see factors of 3 in speed in favour of GNU/Linux. They see more than that when the machine boots as a thin client, obtaining a minimal OS from the server over the LAN and showing the pictures and receiving clicks while the server does the heavy work. Some of that difference in performance is the pathetic need to check every file for malware before opening it. That makes the filesystem perform like the world’s worst. I continue to be amazed that people are not aware of what malware costs them every time they use their PC. Perhaps Conficker will educate some more.

Is your PC patched against Conficker? Did the patch go in before the machine was infected? Sleep well tonight.