Symptoms of the virus are expected to include and have been confirmed to include:

• Services disabling on their own. Namely windows defender, BITS, windows firewall, and some third party antivirus services such as live update.
• Massive increase in network traffic.  Up to a 10-15% increase in total network traffic is expected on infected networks. This is due to attacks on shares and accounts, as well as spreading of the virus and payload.
• Account lockouts reset.  If the virus is on a DC it will dictionary attack the admin account and admin shares, if the account locks out, it will automatically reset the lockout.
• Lastly some or all AV websites, security websites, and windows update sites are inaccessible.  they reply to ping and answer to telnet on port 80, but they are not accessible to any browser.  This appears to be done through a virtual proxy system.

Microsoft has teamed up with ICANN, AOL, Symantec and other big names in computer security and network technologies to attempt to curtail the infestation of the virus.  A $250,000 reward is available for anyone that can provide information leading to the arrest of the coder.  
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Microsoft released a patch MS08-067 on october 15th 2008, that fixes this exploit however, it is estimated that about 30% of computers do not have this patch installed.  This patch is available from Microsoft HERE.  The patch is available for windows 2000 sp4 – windows server 2008 with the exception of windows xp service pack 1 (service pack one has reached its end of support).  Windows 7 has the patch integrated in it already.  Many antivirus makers are releasing removal tools for the virus already.  Microsoft has a removal tool available HERE.  And bit defender has a network/domain removal tool HERE.

What you can do to limit and prevent conflicker spread as a network administrator.

• Follow best practice passwords.  Require password that include special characters and are at least 6 characters long.  This makes brute forcing the password very difficult.  
• Turn off all unnecessary network shares.  Any computer on the network that has a opened share is a vulnerability. Check this out to discover shares.
• Turn off auto run.  You don’t need it in most cases.  Turn it off, it allows for the potential execution of code.
• Update antivirus.  Make sure you have the last definitions and scan engine.  Note that sometimes the scan engine is not an auto update and may require manual processing.  Also make sure that all of your computers are showing in the antivirus console.  If not you might have a potential issue.  Look into it ASAP before it becomes a problem.  
• Windows update.  Update everything.  Every computer should have every critical rated patch, always.  Check out my past post on autopatcher, and check this out for a alternative way to investigate the security of your network.
• Be a bouncer.  Do not allow people to bring in home computers, set up wireless, connect external harddrives and other strange stuff to the network.   They are not on the domain, not subject to group policy, and they might not have AV or patches.  This is a huge vulnerability that often goes unnoticed, but it allows for another way to accidently introduce an infection into a network.

April 1st will be interesting at the least.  I have taken a ton of percautions so I can just sit back and watch the news all day while my network stands strong.

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