Computer hackers or terrorists!

Conficker was a bust--just like Y2K. Not that there aren't a lot of hackers building "botnets" out there (because there are), but anyone with a decent firewall and antivirus software should not have had a problem. As a Twitter user, I sent out a "tweet" asking my 300+ direct followers (and anyone else who follows the "public_timeline" if they had been affected by Conficker, but there was no response. Somebody suggested that all the publicity was just a conspiracy by Symantec and other antivirus companies to sell updated products, and perhaps there was. In any event, the scare was probably overblown and will pass until next time I don't think anyone needs to worry.

The persons behind this viris CONFICAR are jsut palin criminals. Terrorist, maybe, but crimials none the less. What the Chinese harckers are doing I am sure is just plain espaige.

Yes they can be called terrorist.I came to know this news late.But i don't think my computer was on in the first hour.If we have our antiviruses up to date there are no chances of a virus attack.We should not open suspicious mails and we should not try to get free license codes of softwares.Those sites have viruses which will attack the computer.

The Conficker Worm never executed. They are still saying that it might any time between now & April 10. One way to see if your computer has this worm is to go to the following 3 sites. http://www.mcafee.com Http://www.symantec.com http://www.microsoft.com If you can open these 3 sites, your computer is not supposed to be infected with the worm. The worm purportedly will block these sites from being opened. If you have accepted all Microsoft updates since November 2008, you should have the patch to help block it. If you use Firefox, they did an update to help block it. Zone Alarm also did an update to help protect your computer. I don't think that simply staying offline for the day it executes will be enough protection. More than likely no matter when executed & if your computer is infected, your system would be toast once started up. Maybe this was a huge hoax just to get people's attention!!!

Well i got through the BIG SCARE unscaved but i wonder how many hackers there are using Mylot or other community sites??

Viruses are really common nowadays that's why we should always have an Antivirus installed with updated virus definitions. It is a never ending battle with more years to last

I think they should be called computers spies for stealing secret documents. Maybe they're real chinese spies, haha. But that's not the way of terrorism. Terrorists bahave insanely and violently, but they admit the responsibility right after.

I too have heard about this foreboding worm that would attack computers worldwide, however, there was not much conflict for me and I only use a free antivirus and also a freeware firewall which are avast home edition and zonelabs free firewall. There was also a notice on the radio that I was listening to at the time that mentioned that this worm would only affect those that had not much basic protection such as antivirus etcetera. If this is the case I find it hard to believe that government computers would be hacked and information be stolen as there would most definitely be at least some commercial security system installed on them. Moreover, to be considered a terrorist, you must consider the person's intentions not just what they do necessarily do, for example people may do bad things but for good reasons and vice versa with people doing good things for bad reasons. I think that by stealing information, especially for government computers is definitely a serious matter not as much as to be classified as treason but close to this as there is much harm that be brought to the citizens of that particular country especially if that information is not intended to be released to the public. Hackers or virus makers that infect computers for the intention of destroying data are not much better and they too should be locked away behind bars because a lot of people would either have to call us a computer technician to fix the problem and as a result have to pay money to fix something that was damaged by someone else that have cause this or they would lose important work that may affect a person's life to a high degree. What if a struggling businessman lost all of this plans and financial documents because they were stored on their computer and it was all wiped from this malware? That kind of thing should not have to happen to anyone, not just people who rely heavily on their computer for their daily lives, I mean how would you like it if someone gave you a virus and it wiped everything off of your hard drive? No one would like that to happen as much as they don't like people to damaged any other of their property.

I think computer hackers have way too much time on their hands and no lives to spend their time and smarts ruining other peoples' lives, computers and livliehoods. What do they really get out of this? Couldn't they use the intelligence than have to create these worms and viruses for good, for the better of society?

To call a computer hacker a terrorist is far too strong a use of the word "terrorist". As far as I'm aware a computer hacker has never killed, poisoned or personally assaulted anyone or made threats to do the same. As some of the responses indicate, it seems most likely that this computer bug was more hype than anything real. But like one response said, there is still the chance it may activate at a later date. One thing I'm curious of, bhanusb? What does crore mean? I remember this word has being used in Indian English language papers and think it is means 10,000 or 10,000,000? In the context of this discussion, maybe 10,000,000?

I consider anyone who puts terror into anyone's hearts is a terrorist, no matter their method of causing terror. I think that the penalties should be majorly harsh in such a situation.

Isn't a terrorist a person that causes terror? Under this description I'd say those that place fear such as computer hackers would qualify.

i didnt hav any probs wit my internet or anything, all my virus protection softwares didnt report anything either

haah you have been cheaten by the message !!!

You have been made fooled. Fools day :-)

well i think these people should be called computer terrorist becaz they r doing the same thing that terrorist do . i opened my computer yesterday ,but my hard disk was not affected . but still it was a bad day , my on board lan card stopped working and i had to change my internet connection to my external lan card , it took about 5 hrs to do that and all this time i had no internet connectivity .

anyway thanks im not affected to that virus, hackers are not terrorist, thats my opinion.

Hmmm when it comes in the news its already to late. Then they know about the virus so the virus is already spread and harmed allot of ppl. Else the virus won't make the news. For example the "I love you" virus. It wouldn't have made the news if it didn't get so wide spread. Annyhow the best protection is a decand router, and a virusscan thats up to date. And backup your files on a safe spot from time to time. Not on the same machine. Best thing is to scan those files first, and then connect a external hard drive and put them on there.