Conficker – The biggest headache was the hype

Well, it’s April fist. Aside from being the worst day to get news from the internet (it seems like April 1st has become the unofficial Internet holiday for pranking), today also has a good deal of personal significance which has preoccupied my thoughts.

In the “real news” leading up to day, the mass media was preaching doom-and-gloom about Conflicker. 

First, and I need to say this, if you are hearing about a computer virus or new techno-widget from the mass media nightly news, then YES, you are the last one to know about it.

The problem is of course that the bubble heads on the news know as much about tech as they do about the economy. Also, because hype sells more advertising, there is very little incentive for the bubble heads to put this story in it’s proper context. (and I guess it would be pretty embracing if the world really did fall apart, and they missed the story)

None the less, people still had real problems today, and I still had to go out with my team and fix those problems. However, almost every “normal” problem we encountered today was compounded by people asking us “is this confiker?”. What compounded the issue was in some cases the insistence that the problem WAS caused confiker, because the people on TV said that confiker was happening today.

My favorite call out from today was an error printing. When I got there, the first question he asked was “could these be confiker?”. I reached down, and pulled a crumpled sheet out of his HP LaserJet and replyed “Nope, just a paper jam.” At least we both had a good laugh about it.