He's ba-a-a-a-ack!

Those of you who have spent the past four days staring at the photo in my previous post can do something else now.

Just like General Douglas MacArthur, I have returned. (Click on photo to get the full effect.)


Okay, so maybe not just like General Douglas MacArthur. At any rate, Mrs. RWP and I have been in Alabamistan helping our daughter with a few things for a few days, but now we are back in north Georgia in our regular digs.

Tomorrow, being April 1 and all, is April Fools Day (or April Fool’s Day, or April Fools’ Day, or whatever the heck it is) and many people around the world are holding their collective breaths to see whether the dreaded Conficker-C worm will strike their computers. I refer you to the following article that my son sent to me:


Emergency Alert Notice -- Computer Worm Infecting Systems Globally -- Warning of Increased Activity on April 1st

Information Security organizations around the world are bracing for the next wave of a computer worm (malware), known as the “Conficker C” variant, that has been infecting networks and computers around the world since late last year. This virus has instructions that will be executed on infected systems on Wednesday, April 1st. The exact nature of the activity that will be launched is not known, but will affect millions of computers that are already infected. This virus is particularly stubborn to clean up -- so much so that it is recommended that an infected system should be wiped clean and the operating system reinstalled from scratch.

Since its emergence in November 2008, the Conficker worm, also known as Downadup, has gone through several variations. The current variant of the malware, first observed March 6, 2009, is known as Conficker C. This variant contains logic that will become active on April 1, 2009. The exact nature of the activity that will occur on that day is not known at this time. It is known that the malware will begin querying domains for new instructions/payload, as it has done in the past. It is critical that currently infected systems are cleaned before April 1. It should be noted that Conficker C no longer spreads like the previous versions, making detection of infected hosts more difficult. The current variant has added additional defenses against detection and removal, such as disabling Windows services, anti-virus products and analysis tools and preventing the infected host from reaching security-related websites.

(End of article)

I was going to tell you that as long as you have good anti-virus software installed and a firewall, you should be safe. That’s what I was going to tell you, until I read the last sentence in the article. Now I can’t tell you that. Darn.

I sincerely hope this is a menace on the order of The Great Y2K Hullaballoo Over Nothing that occurred in 1999 and that we will all come through it with flying colors (or, as they say in the United Kingdom, unscathed).

But if sometime today, when you least expect it (as Allen Funt used to say on Candid Camera), your cyberworld comes crashing down around you, you can’t say you weren’t warned.