Quick and easy way to test for conficker

By raheem

There’s been a lot of news about the conficker virus. Most of the news stories give you great advice on how to protect yourself (apply the latest Microsoft patches). But how do you know if you are infected or safe? Usually you’d have to run a long virus scan. Your antivirus software would also have to be uptodate. But I found out thru Mark Minasi’s newsletter that there is a simple test you can do to check whether your computer is safe. The test involves going to the link below and check to see if all 6 images in the page load up – this means you are safe. The page also provides a handy guide on how to interpret the test results. It takes less than 5 seconds. 

http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html

The reason this test works is that the conficker worm blocks your computer from visiting security sites that could remove the worm. The above page contains image links to those sites. If those images do not load, its a strong indication that your computer has been compromised by a version of conficker.

When I ran the test, only one of the images did not load. This was likely due to high traffic to the site. I went again later and all 6 images loaded.