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ABC's Elisabeth Leamy found a personal computer whose virus protection had not been updated and went surfing around the World Wide Web. Within 15 minutes the Conficker worm had contacted her via a computer in Alabama; after 40 minutes the worm turned up from China. Next she tried opening an e-mail attachment from an unknown source. "Immediately a malicious program lodged itself on our computer, turned off our security system to clear a path for itself, then tried to communicate with its master." Leamy was now cog in the machine, a mere component in a botnet supercomputer, ready "to send 80% of the world's spam, to steal people's financial IDs, and to crack codes that make massive data breaches."
UPDATE: Tyndall Report's old friend Aaron Barnhart at TV Barn (hat tip TVNewser) points out that when Lesley Stahl covered the Conficker on 60 Minutes, she failed to mention that only Windows-operated personal computers were vulnerable to the worm. ABC's Leamy committed the same sin of omission.
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