IBM: Conficker affects 4 percent of PCs

IBM's Internet Security Systems (ISS) division did a scan of some 2 million computers in the last 24 hours and came up with a startling figure: The Conficker worm was spotted on some 4 percent of the IP addresses it monitored. This finding comes in the wake of IBM researchers revealing that they have successfully reverse-engineered Cornficker to track infection by measuring peer-to-peer traffic on the network. 

Danny McPherson, chief security officer with Arbor Networks told PC World, the numbers are simply a best estimate at this point. The reason is that government and enterprise PCs are probably better protected than that of broadband consumers. And of course, these machines are normally hidden behind firewalls. Even so, McPherson thinks that Conficker is a big problem. He noted, "Even if they're off by an order of magnitude--which is possible--the number of infected machines is immense."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at PC World

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