Thesun 2009-04-02 Page09 Conficker Worm Digs In Around The World

theSun

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| THURSDAY APRIL 2 2009

news without borders Drug-resistant TB a ‘time bomb’: WHO BEIJING: Health officials gathered in Beijing yesterday warned against deadly drugresistant strains of tuberculosis, which are spreading fastest in developing countries that lack the infrastructure to tackle the disease. Over half of new cases of tuberculosis are resistant to multiple drugs right from the start, and not as a direct result of substandard treatment, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned. “This is the true alarm bell. This tells us that resistant strains are now circulating in the general population, spreading widely and largely silently in a growing pool of latent infection,” director-general Margaret Chan said. “Obviously this is a situation set to spiral out of control. Call it what you want, a time bomb or

a powder keg, any way you look at it this is a potentially explosive situation.” According to WHO, of nine million new TB cases annually, about 490,000 are multiple-drug resistant TB (MDRTB) and about 40,000 are extensively drug resistant (XDR-TB) based on 2006 data. People with XDR-TB, which has cropped up in 55 countries, have few treatment options and death rates are high. The spread of those strains could compromise the global fight against tuberculosis, which relies on drugs developed decades ago. “The situation is already alarming, and is poised to

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grow much worse very quickly,” Chan said. China announced steps to provide health coverage for people suffering from drugresistant tuberculosis, helping to close a gap that has allowed the more deadly strain of the disease to take hold. China’s measures are funded by a US$33 million (RM122 million) grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. – Reuters

Conficker worm digs in around the world SAN FRANCISCO: Computer security top guns around the world watched warily as the dreaded Conficker worm squirmed deeper into infected machines with the arrival of an April 1st trigger date. The malicious software evolved, as expected, from East to West, beginning in time zones first to greet April Fool’s Day. “Planes are not going to fall out of the sky and the internet is not going to melt down,” said threat analyst Paul Ferguson of Trend Micro computer security firm in Northern California. “The big mystery is what those behind Conficker are going to do. When they have this many machines under their control it is kind of scary. With a click of a mouse they could get thousands of machines to do whatever they want.” A task force assembled by Microsoft has been working to stamp out the worm, referred to as Conficker or DownAdUP, and the US software colossus has placed a bounty of US$250,000 (RM925,000) on the heads of those responsible for the threat. The worm was programmed to modify itself yesterday to become harder to stop and began doing that when infected machines got cues, some from websites with Greenwich Mean Time and others based on local

clocks. Conficker task force members tracking internet traffic in Asia and Europe after clocks struck April 1st there said there was no sign that the worm was doing anything other than modifying itself to be harder to exterminate. Conficker had been programmed to reach out to 250 websites daily to download commands from its masters, they said, but yesterday it began generating daily lists of 50,000 websites and reaching randomly to 500 of those. The hackers behind the worm have yet to give it any specific orders. An estimated one to two million computers worldwide are infected with Conficker. Computer security specialists warn that the Conficker threat will remain even if April 1st passes without it causing trouble. “It doesn’t seem to be doing anything right now,” Ferguson said as Conficker made its way to the western United States. “I hope April 1st comes and goes with no trouble. But, there is this loaded pistol looming large out there even if no one has pulled the trigger.” The FBI said on Tuesday it is working with the Department of Homeland Security and other US agencies to “identify and mitigate” the Conficker threat. – AFP

Judge freezes assets of Madoff’s sons, executives NEW YORK: A judge froze the assets of disgraced Wall Street legend Bernard Madoff’s two sons and five executives who ran hedge fund portfolios that funnelled money into his Ponzi scheme. The order by Connecticut Superior Court Judge Arthur Hiller, issued on Monday and made public on Tuesday, prohibits them from selling homes or moving money, and marks the first time their assets have been frozen. “This is an important step,” said David Golub, a lawyer representing the town of Fairfield, Connecticut, in a lawsuit against Madoff and the so-called feeder funds run by Tremont Group Holdings, Maxam Capital Management and Fairfield Greenwich Group. The town’s pension funds charged in a lawsuit that the funds “knew – or wilfully refused to know – that Madoff’s investment returns were not actually produced by his purported split-strike conversion strategy.” Separately, a judge in New York denied an appeal by Madoff’s brother, Peter, to lift a freeze on his assets in a civil lawsuit. Peter Madoff had reached an agreement with US authorities in December on an asset freeze, according to

court papers. Lawyers for Madoff could not be reached immediately for comment. Authorities have charged the 70-year-old Madoff, a former Nasdaq stock market chairman, with operating the biggest investment fraud on Wall Street, cheating private investors, charities and pension funds out of an estimated US$65 billion (RM240 billion). On Monday, Hiller ruled that Madoff’s sons, the last immediate family members whose assets had not yet been frozen, could have limited access to their money. The order, effective until April 13, also covers the assets of hedge fund executives Walter Noel and Jeffrey Tucker, who together founded Fairfield Greenwich; Andres Piedrahita, a managing director at Fairfield Greenwich; Sandra Manzke, who ran Maxam Capital; and Robert Schulman, who once ran Tremont Group Holdings. Maxam, an investment adviser based in Darien, Connecticut, was one of many funds that invested with Madoff. Tremont’s Rye Investment Management unit lost roughly US$3 billion (RM11 billion), virtually all of its assets to Madoff. – Reuters