A headline at InfoPackets.com asks the all-important question: “Whatever Happened to the Conficker Virus?”

What, indeed. You’d think the poor beast disappeared without a trace. Part of me wants to issue an Amber alert for it.

“It’s the biggest botnet in the world, and nobody cares,” one expert lamented

When F-Secure technovangelist Mikko Hyppönen speaks to a rather bored media these days, he insists Conficker still has “five million” PCs under its control. Yet the global media all but ignores him. “It’s the biggest botnet in the world, and nobody cares,” he lamented when I queried him over the media’s near-total lack of enthusiasm.

(Forgive the oxymoron when I say “near-total lack.” I’ll make up for it with a great metaphor, I promise.)

You know John Leyden’s byline if you read The Register with any regularity. I asked him to opine on why his colleagues seem so blasé. Here, Leyden contrasts Conficker’s abundance of data before April vs. its absence of data after April:

No new victims have emerged and the update mechanism changed in April so that [there is] far less visibility [among antivirus vendors] about what the worm is doing. Microsoft has … released a removal tool, which has probably had an effect on reducing the population of infected hosts, albeit to an as yet unknown extent.

Figures on how many systems remains infected by Conficker remain hard to come by (I know because I’ve asked). Vendors — the root source of many stories about malware — are not talking about the worm, coming up with any new analysis etc. either. Everybody has moved on and they are now talking about attacks on social media websites, such as Twitter, reflecting the current media fad. All this means there’s no more fuel to throw on the fire, even for specialist IT reporters.

(I know, I know: it sounds like I should introduce Leyden to Hyppönen. They know each other quite well. Neither one knew I’d quote the other in this column.)

A com­pu­ter secu­rity repor­ter ob­served “every­body has moved on and they are now talking about attacks on social media web­sites … reflec­ting the current media fad”

Hyppönen’s problem as an antivirus vendor, and Leyden’s problem as a (competent!) computer security reporter, echo the problems I’ve seen over the last 20+ years. With only rare exceptions (i.e.e.g. The Register), the computer media routinely goes insane with misdirected security hype — and then routinely ignores the real threat(s) after they realize just how badly they got hoodwinked by their own misdirection.

Conficker is the most recent putrid fruit to fall from computer security’s mangled tree. (Hey, now that’s a great metaphor!) You’d almost swear I wrote Leyden’s summary for him:

The media in general has a short attention span. And for national press a story about a computer virus is never going to make the news unless it’s the fastest spreading, biggest ever or hits a high profile target. The fact that nothing much happened with Conficker after the 1 April deadline [passed] means that the mainstream media, if they think of it at all, think of the worm as a damp squib.

I don’t think the story will return to prominence unless someone is arrested for creating the malware, which seems unlikely.

Rest in peace, Conficker … we hardly knew ye.

Intelligence officials use the term “stovepipe” to describe “several ways in which raw [computer security] intelligence information may be presented without proper context… The lack of context may come from a particular group, in the [computer security] structure, selectively presenting only that information that supports certain conclusions.”

Multiple employees spout their personal opinions on McAfee’s official Twitter account. How long will this lack of corporate discipline continue?

In short, a “stovepipe” problem can lead to mass hysteria. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion Twitter will help foment hysteria when the next media-darling worm or virus comes along.

On the corporate side, the context of any tweet about the latest worm will quickly get lost in the din of tweets about booth bunnies, white papers, and the occasional vetting failure.

“What’s a vetting failure, Rob?” It occurs when a company doesn’t limit / review official communications before release. For example, multiple non-PR employees use McAfee’s Twitter account to broadcast their own personal opinions. Their lack of discipline is a vetting failure in the making as we can see in this example from 27 Apr 09:

McAfeeAvertLabs: Hi! If you think I add value to your network, do drop me a recommendation at http://mrtweet.com/McAfeeAv… Much appreciated!

McAfeeAvertLabs: we just started following @MrTweet…. might take a few days! my bad!

Then, of course, McAfee tweets commercial advertisements (aka “spam”). This fact raises two philosophical questions. First: does a mature firm in the computer security industry need to advertise to offset the cost of a free service like Twitter? Second: why do some reporters feel compelled to subscribe to computer security spam?

It’s only a matter of time before we learn McAfee’s offi­cial stand on abor­tion & gun control…

On the personal side, the computer security experts themselves seem far too wrapped up in their own celebrity status. The context of any tweet on the latest worm will get lost in the din of tweets about their speaking engagements and the bad airline food they endured. Check out these actual tweets from computer security experts:

• Mark Sunner (MessageLabs): “if you loved the lion the witch and the wardrobe et al then you will find this book mesmerizingly insightful http://www.planetnarnia.com/”
• Costin Raiu (Kaspersky Labs): “Tried a Segway for the first time, with the very nice chaps from segwaybooking.com.”
• Graham Cluley (Sophos): “can’t believe i missed watching Dr Who live again.. what kind of fan am i anyway? thank goodness for the pvr…”
• Mary Landesman (antivirus.about.com): “Time Warner: yeah, our service sucks, but we’re a monopoly so we’ll just charge more and give less. Congressman fights back. http://tiny …”
• Mikko Hypponen (F-Secure): “Hey, since when has Twitter automatically converted ‘normal’ links to Tinyurls? My previous tweet should have pointed to f-secure.com…”
• Costin Raiu (Kaspersky Labs): “20 people at the Shuntaint presentation, where is everybody else?”

Yes yes yes, I’ll grant you the fact these experts opened their own personal Twitter accounts. Yes yes yes, I’ll grant you the fact they can say just about anything they want. But it doesn’t change the fact their tweets lack focus.

McAfee uses Twitter for spam to help pay for all those free tweets they send out. Their own web­site just can’t sup­port their PR needs…

To put it simply: computer security tweets lack focus at both the personal and corporate levels. And that’s bad news for us. Undisciplined experts can easily generate hysteria with a “speak first, thinkignore later” tweetitude.

On the bright side, reporters might soon get tired of all these unfocused tweets … and stop following the potential hypemongers.

Take computer security reporter John Leyden, for example — his Twitter account follows McAfee Avert Labs and MessageLabs bigwig Mark Sunner and Sophos bigwig Graham Cluley. Do you honestly think Leyden cares about McAfee’s official stand on abortion or Sunner’s latest book review for Home Schooling magazine or Cluley’s inability to time-shift a TV time traveler?

It’s only a matter of time before Leyden himself realizes he doesn’t care about these unfocused tweets … and stops following the potential hypemongers. Let’s just hope he stops following them for the right reasons.

(I suspect he will, given the fact he follows the Vmyths Twitter account…)

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Vmyths suffered a similar problem in the early 2000s when I expanded this website both to critique the antivirus industry in general and to serve as an outlet for my computer security humor.

Tabloid repor­ters may follow a com­pu­ter secu­rity expert’s unfocused blogs & tweets.

Re­spec­table jour­nalists must stop the practice.

I finally launched SecurityCritics and HumorControl so Vmyths could return to its paladin roots.

But hey, let’s not overlook the fact I myself lack focus in my totally personal blog. I opine on everything from computer security to local gas price gouging to the amazing poker hands I’ve been dealt to a newly minted word to describe Wikipedia.

The key here is that I don’t view my personal blog as something that will change the world and I don’t see myself as wrapped up in my own celebrity status. (Well, except maybe here I do, but that’s it.)

I try to change the world through my focused efforts at Vmyths, SecurityCritics, and (yes!) HumorControl. If you subscribe to my personal blog, I urge you to review all of your blog/tweet subscriptions to see which ones lack focus. If any other computer security experts out there claim they don’t use Twitter to change the world, then be sure to cancel your subscriptions to their tweets as well.

Remember those hysterical chain-letter emails? Now imagine hysterical chain-letter tweets … from the experts themselves.

If, on the other hand, you subscribe to my personal blog because you’re that totally amazing lover who gently cradled me in her arms during that horrific time of grief after my wife died … yes honey, you follow my blog for all the right reasons and I can’t thank you enough for our wonderful midwestern tryst and I could sure use another digital snapshot of you as the previous one got, uh, “messed up” along with my keyboar—

—ahh, but you’ll notice I lack focus in the previous paragraph. {ahem} Let’s not digress. (And let’s not tell anyone about my keyboard spills, okay? Thanks, I appreciate it.)

Let’s hope the rest of the computer security industry realizes their lack of focus on Twitter … before they plunge into an intelligence stovepipe when the next media-darling worm or virus comes along.

{Update: Mikko Hypponen tweeted “Vmyths is, once again, right on the money. Cheers to Rob.” His kudos spurred at least ten people to follow Vmyths on Twitter.}

F-Secure flunky Mikko Hypponen loves to express his thoughts on Twitter. But he really needs to think before he tweets. Check out this classic case of irony from Hypponen:

“Just woke up and learned about XSS Twitter worm last night. You can see from here how it started. Don’t click links. http://bit.ly/lV34d”

A warning to “don’t click links” followed by … a link. You gotta love irony.

In Mikko’s defense, he probably hadn’t yet downed his first cup of coffee. If you’ve woken up next to him like I have, then you know it takes a few sips of joe to get his brain started in the morning.

(Hmm? Oh, I woke up next to him in an adjoining hotel room in the middle of a hurricane. Why do you ask?)

Hypponen rattled off two more tweets a few hours later. See if you can spot the irony:

{#1} I guess there’s going to be quite a few Twitter worms for a day or two. Be careful, don’t view profiles, don’t follow links. Go outside?

{#2} Basic info on current Twitter worms from our blog: http://bit.ly/3xozo #stalkdaily #mikeyy #onedegree #worms

A warning to “don’t follow links” followed by … a link in his next tweet. Like I said: you gotta love irony.

I think we can also say “Mikko Hypponen can’t see his own irony.” Luckily, F-Secure employs a guy named Patrick who can see irony. Let’s hope Mikko sets down with him for a bit of remedial instruction.

Naturally, I tweeted Mikko’s irony to those who follow Vmyths on Twitter…

A new headline at PC Magazine calls the Downadup worm an “epidemic.” Other news outlets have latched onto the story with similar weasel words and trigger phrases. If you take the “growing exponentially” claims at face value, then throw away your PC right now because we’re doomed. Experts predict this worm will infect at least 8.7 billion PCs by Sunday.

The antivirus firm behind the hype is now offering prizes to people who test their new product. “Wow, that’s really cool!” F-Secure doesn’t want all that global media exposure to go to waste, you know…

(“One computer for every dollar the ILoveYou virus cost, eh Rob?” Exactly! You’re catching on.)

In other words, I may have been mistaken in yesterday’s “died on the vine” comment. The media has waited a very long time to orgasm over a virus story and I once again wonder if they can hold back their ecstasy…

…Except there’s a tiny little problem. The antivirus vendors just don’t seem interested in it!

Take Symantec, for example — they actually lowered their ThreatCon status today from “2″ (elevated) to “1″ (normal). Kaspersky Labs still describes Downadup as a “moderate risk.” Neither McAfee nor Trend Micro has updated their alert pages. SANS continues to show a “green” Internet threat level. About.com virus expert Mary Landesman tackled a different subject in today’s column.

And F-Secure…

Hmmm, F-Secure. You know, I don’t think F-Secure will like the rest of my column.

F-Secure — the antivirus firm behind the “nine million” estimate — announced they released a “Removal Tool” for the Downadup worm. Oh, and be sure to check out their new beta security product! “Feedback enrolls users into prize giveaways,” F-Secure bragged. “We recently received another batch of our very popular laptop stickers, so as a bonus, we’ll pass along a stack to Tomi [from the Customer Involvement Team].”

Waitaminit. Laptop stickers?!? Pardon me while I say “wow, that’s really cool!”

Folks, the press wants us to believe there’s a global “epidemic.” So what does F-Secure do with all the media attention they whipped up? Why, they turn it into an opportunity to recruit beta testers for a new product!

{sniff} Do I smell something familiar? Or did I just forget to the flush the toilet?

My original notion for this column centered on the media hysteria I expected from F-Secure’s huffing over variants of the Downadup worm. Quoting from a (level-headed) story in The Register:

[The Downadup worm] that attacks a patched vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, is making exponential gains if estimates from researchers at F-Secure are accurate. They show 6.5 million new infections in the past four days, bringing the total number of machines it has compromised to almost 9 million. The astronomical growth stunned some researchers, although others cautioned the numbers could be inflated since the counting of infected computers is by no means an exact science. Most agreed F-Secure’s estimate was certainly plausible and if it proved to be correct, represented a major development in the world of cyberthreats.

6.5 million newly infected PCs, you say? All of them whacked in a four-day period? Hmmm. The timing of this makes me wonder how many of those PCs showed up under the plastic tannenbaum.

Yet it would seem my worries about hysteria have died on the vine. Consider the following:

The media yawned when F-Secure claimed the Downadup worm tallied another 6.5 million PCs in a four-day period…

• The SANS Internet Storm Center continued to display a “green” Internet threat level;
• Symantec continued to hold at “ThreatCon 2” with no mention of the Downadup worm;
• McAfee didn’t even mention it in a “breaking advisory”;
• ISS maintained an “AlertCon 1” with no mention of the Downadup worm;
• Sophos technovangelist Graham Cluley raised little more than an eyebrow in his corporate blog; and
• About.com antivirus guide Mary Landesman devoted only two paragraphs in her blog.

Only Kaspersky Labs seems to have given F-Secure some shrift when they announced a virus alert on their website. Yet they only identified it as a moderate risk. So, uh … let’s call it “short shrift” and leave it at that.

The media, too, seems to have collectively yawned over F-Secure’s declaration. One CNN Headline News anchor — dare I say it? — almost smirked while reading from the teleprompter. (In all fairness, it isn’t the first time a CNN mannequin has smirked or spoken in an upbeat tone about a devastating computer virus attack.)

This non-media circus reminds me yet again of Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf. F-Secure, on the other hand, will doubtless call up the Cassandra fable to dismiss any accusations of wolf-crying.

One quote in The Register’s story leapt out at me for its irony:

“This thing has gotten way out of hand,” said Paul Ferguson, a security researcher for anti-virus provider Trend Micro who has spent the past several weeks tracking the worm’s progress. “It seems pretty spectacular to me that there could be that much growth.”

I dismiss Ferguson’s quote as ironic because Trend Micro’s “vinfo” page hasn’t declared a medium- or high-risk alert. How can we take him at face value when his company doesn’t even wail about it on an alert page?

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Antivirus vendors and computer news reporters have certainly suffered a drought of hysteria in the past few years — and I myself fret that we’re due for another hystericane.

F-Secure will doubtless call up the Cassandra fable to dismiss any accusations of wolf-crying…

Why, then, hasn’t the Downadup worm generated “the perfect storm” of media hysteria?

The answer may lie in an amazing buildup to America’s “double major holiday.” Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day while today sees the inauguration of Barack Obama. News organizations appear highly focused on the orgasm of festivities in Washington, DC—

—and the media’s infatuation with U.S. politics may have simply overshadowed everything else of importance.

“You sound a bit facetious, Rob.” Yeah, okay: you caught me. Longtime readers will recall the fact government experts reminisce about the Nimda worm as a global catastrophe that cost billions of dollars and that would have qualified as one of the worst acts of cyber-terrorism ever caught on tape. And those experts still bemoan the fact it didn’t get much airplay … because it came just one week after the equally devastating physical terrorism of 9/11/01.

First Nimda; now Downadup. This leads me to ask a philosophical question. “Why do the world’s most devastating computer security attacks always seem to take place when reporters are too preoccupied to give it the attention it truly deserves?”