Security experts have put together some intriguing statistics about the Conficker virus, including the total spread of the worm and the worst-hit country.

It seems Vietnam has seen the most serious invasion, while four per cent of all computer infections are related to Conficker.

The figures come from OpenDNS, a firm which offers DNS (Domain Name System) resolution services. This is the process of mapping a website name (such as www.infopackets.com) to the actual IP address where the website physically exists. Because Conficker interferes with this process, the firm has plenty of data to draw conclusions from.

Brazil and Philippines Also Hit

According to OpenDNS, 13% of computers infected with Conficker are in Vietnam, followed closely by Brazil with 12% and the Philippines with 11%. Fewer than 5% of infected machines are in the United States, which is much lower than you'd expect given its population and how common computers are here compared to other countries. (Source: pcmag.com)

There's no clear reason why this should be, but it's possible that there are more pirated copies of Windows in the most affected countries, making them less likely to receive Microsoft security updates. It's also possible that people in wealthier countries are more likely to have additional security software.

Meanwhile X-Force, the security division of IBM, estimates that 1 in every 25 computers that currently carries an infection is a victim of Conficker. It's important to stress this statistic only relates to computers with some sort of virus and does not mean four per cent of all machines have specifically the Conficker virus. (Source: computerworld.com)

Don't Be Complacent

As noted in Brandon Dimmel's article today: just because computers around the world did not begin crashing on April 1, Conficker is not a 'dud' or an overblown risk. The virus creators still have the potential to control a million or more machines, and the job of preventing them from exploiting this control became a lot harder after this Wednesday.

If you haven't checked for Conficker yet, or you want to reassure yourself, one of the security alliances working on the problem now has an extremely simple test at confickerworkinggroup.com (link below). It displays images hosted by leading security firm websites which are known to be blocked by infected machines.

http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org