[PCWorld]

Post your comments for A Message For Your IT Director About the Conficker Worm here

[netizen]

The April fools joke has been perpetrated on us all by Microsoft and the anti virus makers. There is no legitimate reason for malware to exist other than to sell a product for a perceived threat. Out of all the virii that I have seen over my ten years as a I.T. worker, not one did any thing other than mess up a machine. The only one that profited from this sort of incident were the hardware and software manufacturers. This begs the question, Why would someone spend untold hours and waste years of training for malicious glee.
The code snippets I have seen are way too sophisticated for an amateur and a professional programmer could make way more money with a legitimate product.
That leaves the only ones who could profit from malware, those that sell anti malware products. It is the old sale maxim, find a need and fill it, if there is no need then create one.

[alanrollow]

I don't care about any virus or anything, I have tech guys with me.

These folks have always helped me whether I crash my PC or download the virus, they always help me getting out of the problem.

[lumpkin]

I don't care about viruses either. I really like virtualization.

[laptoptech12]

@netizen...
That is the biggest load of garbage I've seen in a long time.. Not 1 malicious virus in 10 years? That's really hard to believe.. you must not actually be reading up to see what they can do.
I've been a laptop tech for a few years and have removed viruses from literally thousands of computers (we have a 35000 user base).
Of the viruses we've encountered, the majority did SOMETHING bad. Some stole passwords, some deleted documents, some downloaded adware and other malware to put advertising on the users computer (driving up sales for these bogus programs that are NOT related to Symantec, McAfee, Panda, etc.
If you're going to lie, please at least do a bit of research so it's semi-believable.

[netizen]

Dude, I may have mispoke. In no way did I mean to imply that virii are not harmful because they can do a great deal of damage and or difficult to remove.

What I meant was it is a grand conspriacy amongst the leading software manufactures that are creating this crap.

There is no way that a criminal mastermind would do anything without a profit. Just blowing up a computer does nothing for the author.

However, if a 2 year old or older computer distructs, who profits. first it is Microsoft because you will iether be buying a new computer or the latest edition of windows that will run on that hardware platform. Second would be the malware vendors because the replacement for the distructed pc will need the most current anti malware product(s). Third will be the productivity software vendors, like, your guessed it, Microsoft Office. Then there are all the other little bits of software like photo editing and communications. And of course ythe new computer with the new OS will not work with your old printer. And so on, and so on.

[WinTard]

Conficker/Downadup? What's that? Never seen one around here... But then again, I practice safe computing since day one... And even though I am IT, don't particularly trust IT guys. Alas, I've seen lots and lots of clutz human beings though... Especially IT Directors.

The saddest part are those who think they are invincible. Inevitably, they are the first to fall victim to any malware. Especially under Linux or Mac... Because they don't think they are vulnerable, they become part of the problem, by being infected, unknowingly, then infecting the rest around them.