Conficker is a nasty and enterprising worm that has spawned a $250k bounty for the author’s capture and at least one variant that has evaded the efforts of security firms. The race to defeat Conficker may be at an end, however, as Romanian anti-virus vendor BitDefender has announced a tool that will identify and remove any known variant of the worm.

BitDefender is the first to offer a free tool which disinfects all versions of Downadup and is available for all infected users at: http://bdtools.net This domain is the first to serve a removal tool without being blocked by the e-threat.

The worm itself is not new, it made its first appearance late November 2008, known under the names Conficker or Kido as well exploiting the vulnerability described in the Microsoft security bulletin MS08-067. After successful exploitation it used to install rogue security software on the infected machine.