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Conficker Virus to Attack Southwest Airlines Web Site

by Tim Stevens on March 3, 2009 at 11:51 AM


Oh that Conficker virus, it just won't go away. Despite its authors having a bounty placed on their heads by Microsoft, the thing is still spreading, updating itself, and becoming even more prevalent. That spells bad news for Southwest Airlines, discovered Mike Wood, a security expert at SophosLabs. In a recent SophosLabs corporate blog post, he explained that millions of computers infected with the virus are set to start accessing, and thus attacking, the Southwest's Web site on March 13.

Have you ever been the victim of a computer virus?
Yes44829 (70.0%)
No9478 (14.8%)
I'm not sure9692 (15.1%)


When the infected hoard begins hitting the Southwest.com site, Conficker will have effectively started a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS attack. The intent is to flood the servers hosting that page and bring them offline, so that anyone else who attempts to browse to that site receives only an error message.

Assuming the attack takes place, it shouldn't impact the overall ability of the airline to launch flights and handle passengers, but online check-in will almost surely be unavailable, as well as any other functionality the airline provides online. So, plan ahead, because you might need to get to the airport a little earlier than you'd like! [From: CNET News]

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Tags: conficker, ddos, denial of service, DenialOfService, distributed denial of service, DistributedDenialOfService, online threats, OnlineThreats, security, southwest, southwest airlines, SouthwestAirlines, top, travel, virus, web, worm

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