“A new sleeper virus that could allow hackers to steal financial and personal information has now spread to more than eight million computers in what industry analysts say is one of the most serious infections they have ever seen,” Barry Neild reports for CNN.

“The Downadup or Conficker worm exploits a bug in Microsoft Windows to infect mainly corporate networks, where — although it has yet to cause any harm — it potentially exposes infected PCs to hijack,” Neild reports.

“Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at anti-virus firm F-Secure, says while the purpose of the worm is unclear, its unique ‘phone home’ design, linking back to its point of origin, means it can receive further orders to wreak havoc,” Neild reports. “‘On Tuesday there were 2.5 million, on Wednesday 3.5 million and today [Friday], eight million,’ he told CNN. ‘It’s getting worse, not better.’”

Full article here.

BBC News reports, “Once the worm is up and running, it creates an HTTP server, resets a machine’s System Restore point (making it far harder to recover the infected system) and then downloads files from the hacker’s web site.”

“Most malware uses one of a handful of sites to download files from, making them fairly easy to locate, target, and shut down,” The Beeb reports. “But Conficker does things differently.”

“Anti-virus firm F-Secure says that the worm uses a complicated algorithm to generate hundreds of different domain names every day… Only one of these will actually be the site used to download the hackers’ files,” The Beeb reports. “On the face of it, tracing this one site is almost impossible.”

The Beeb reports, “Microsoft says that the malware has infected computers in many different parts of the world, with machines in China, Brazil, Russia, and India having the highest number of victims.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Good thing you “saved” $11.59 upfront by saddling your company with Windows dreck instead of getting superior and secure Apple Macs, huh, Mr. CTO Doofus? After you rebuild your entire network of faulty crap, so that it can be ready to get infected again next week, please peruse our list of related articles below at your leisure.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Macintosher" for the heads up.]