Conficker Hits French MoD
The conficker/downadup worm has impacted the French Ministry of Defense, according to an article posted by The Telegraph. According to the article;
…aircraft were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been warned about several months beforehand.
At one point French naval staff were also instructed not to even open their computers.
Like the recent compromise of the British MoD, the compromise of the French MoD appears to have been isolated to the unclassified network called Intramar. Coincidentally it was the navy that has reportedly been compromised in both cases.
It’s still being questioned whether or not aircraft were grounded by the worm. However, the fact that the worm impacted the MoD is not in question and that illustrates the risk of having weapons systems interconnected with the Internet.
To my knowledge the botnet created by conficker/downadup hasn’t been put into action yet. However, the fact that it now has two major trophies; the French and the British Ministries of Defense is certainly worth pondering. The propagation methods this worm uses have proven to be very effective.
