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80-753: Conficker , also known as Downup , Downadup and Kido , is a computer worm targeting the Microsoft Windows operating system that was first detected in November 2008. It uses flaws in Windows OS software (MS08-067 / CVE-2008-4250) and dictionary attacks on administrator passwords to propagate while forming a botnet , and has been unusually difficult to counter because of its combined use of many advanced malware techniques. The Conficker worm infected millions of computers including government, business and home computers in over 190 countries, making it

160-518: A mounted policing capability. The mounted officers are employed to target crime hotspots and are also seen at many events including demonstrations and the region's football matches. Horses are also used to search inaccessible areas for missing or wanted people. The unit is made up of a team of specialist police officers, skilled grooms and trainers , and 35 horses. The mounted unit is based at Hough End, in Chorlton , and uses horseboxes to transport

240-601: A detectable signature when scanned remotely. The peer-to-peer command protocol used by variants D and E of the virus has since been partially reverse-engineered , allowing researchers to imitate the virus network's command packets and positively identify infected computers en-masse. Signature updates for a number of network scanning applications are now available. It can also be detected in passive mode by sniffing broadcast domains for repeating ARP requests. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) recommends disabling AutoRun to prevent Variant B of

320-454: A high proportion of which were violent offences. Following the announcement, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins resigned from his post. Greater Manchester Police was directly created from two recently amalgamated city police forces, Manchester and Salford Police and parts of what were Lancashire Constabulary , Cheshire Constabulary and West Yorkshire Constabulary on 1 April 1974. The city forces were Manchester Borough Police , which formed in

400-623: A host program, as it is an independent program or code chunk. Therefore, it is not restricted by the host program , but can run independently and actively carry out attacks. Exploit attacks Because a worm is not limited by the host program, worms can take advantage of various operating system vulnerabilities to carry out active attacks. For example, the " Nimda " virus exploits vulnerabilities to attack. Complexity Some worms are combined with web page scripts, and are hidden in HTML pages using VBScript , ActiveX and other technologies. When

480-457: A large number of vulnerabilities in the network. Any code designed to do more than spread the worm is typically referred to as the " payload ". Typical malicious payloads might delete files on a host system (e.g., the ExploreZip worm), encrypt files in a ransomware attack, or exfiltrate data such as confidential documents or passwords. Some worms may install a backdoor . This allows

560-524: A machine, then the majority of worms are unable to spread to it. If a vulnerability is disclosed before the security patch released by the vendor, a zero-day attack is possible. Users need to be wary of opening unexpected emails, and should not run attached files or programs, or visit web sites that are linked to such emails. However, as with the ILOVEYOU worm, and with the increased growth and efficiency of phishing attacks, it remains possible to trick

640-730: A month after the Manchester Arena bombing , the Chief Constable of GMP, Ian Hopkins , said the force was under strain due to funding cuts. Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham , intended to write to the Prime Minister claiming that the GMP was up to its limits "and probably beyond them". In March 2010 there was a total workforce of 13,189 staff, but projections suggested there would be only 10,108 by 2020. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) maintained that

720-464: A number of other borough forces, each with their own significant history, which had been abolished in the late 1960s (under the Police Act 1964) and which had been amalgamated into the county forces of Lancashire and Cheshire. These two county forces only policed these boroughs for around six years before Greater Manchester was created and GMP took over responsibility for providing police services. In

800-489: A regular Talbot Sunbeam. By the early 1990s, TASS had been replaced by the Tactical Vehicle Crime Unit (TVCU), operating a majority-unmarked high-performance fleet which included Ford Escort XR3i and Ford Sierra RS Cosworth cars. This unit notably featured in the 1995 fly on the wall six-part BBC documentary X-Cars , albeit referred to as 'X Department', which attracted 12 million viewers on

880-643: A small number of special constables were integrated into the Special Operations Department (X – Depart) working within the Road Policing Units (RPU's), undertaking a full and complete duties within the traffic department. In addition there are a number of special constables engaged, with support of their employers in the Employee Supported Policing scheme. This is where the officers employer supports

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960-477: A tethered blimp in 2010 to provide surveillance for major events and high crime locations. The blimp was only used on 18 occasions and was sold due to operational problems. GMP operates a Tactical Aid Unit which is deployed for crowd control and riot policing . The service has policed notable riots such as the 2001 Oldham race riots , the 2008 UEFA Cup final riots and the 2011 England riots which affected Salford and Manchester city centre in 2011. The SCD

1040-616: A three-year period from 2009, to date this target has not been achieved. This unit conducts overt surveillance of certain released prisoners and upload some footage onto YouTube of people that they believe have reoffended. Greater Manchester Police has eight specialist Major Incident syndicates. The Transport Unit was created in November 2019. Its role involves proactively tackling crime and disorder across Greater Manchester's public transport system, including roads, buses, trams and interchanges. The unit consists of 56 police officers, replacing previous initiatives that saw PCSOs patrolling

1120-514: A user accesses a webpage containing a virus, the virus automatically resides in memory and waits to be triggered. There are also some worms that are combined with backdoor programs or Trojan horses , such as " Code Red ". Contagiousness Worms are more infectious than traditional viruses. They not only infect local computers, but also all servers and clients on the network based on the local computer. Worms can easily spread through shared folders , e-mails , malicious web pages, and servers with

1200-410: Is a crucial step. Microsoft released a removal guide for the virus, and recommended using the current release of its Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool to remove the virus, then applying the patch to prevent re-infection. Newer versions of Windows are immune to Conficker. Many third-party anti-virus software vendors have released detection updates to their products and claim to be able to remove

1280-480: Is a unit of GMP responsible for dealing with serious crimes and providing protection for vulnerable people. The GMP Counter Terrorism Unit was formed in April 2007 to prevent the spread of terrorism. The city has experienced incidents with the intention to spread terror, such as the 1996 Manchester Bombing and the Manchester Arena bombing . Most recently, the unit helped thwart the 2009 plot to launch terror attacks on

1360-644: Is equivalent to (MSFT) D. None To start itself at system boot, the virus saves a copy of its DLL form to a random filename in the Windows system or system32 folder, then adds registry keys to have svchost.exe invoke that DLL as an invisible network service. The virus has several mechanisms for pushing or pulling executable payloads over the network. These payloads are used by the virus to update itself to newer variants, and to install additional malware. To prevent payloads from being hijacked, variant A payloads are first SHA-1 - hashed and RC4 - encrypted with

1440-483: Is run by a chief superintendent , with each 'division' or 'cluster' being led by a superintendent . As of March 2021 , these are the six command areas: Manchester Airport (I) Division falls within the Specialist Operations branch. GMP also operates a Road Policing Unit (RPU) responsible for all traffic policing in the county, which includes over 280 miles (450 km) of motorway. In 2009,

1520-423: Is spent on what the chief constable called "social work" instead of fighting crime. They repeated this exercise on 14 October 2014. GMP have used social media as a helpful force rather than a hindrance. In the 2011 England riots , with criticism of the role social media such as Twitter and Facebook had in instigating the riots, GMP stated that support on social media had resulted in many responses from members of

1600-596: Is widely accepted in the cybersecurity field. In 2011, working with the FBI, Ukrainian police arrested three Ukrainians in relation to Conficker, but there are no records of them being prosecuted or convicted. A Swede, Mikael Sallnert, was sentenced to 48 months in prison in the U.S. after a guilty plea. Due to the lock of the virus files against deletion as long as the system is running, the manual or automatic removal itself has to be performed during boot process or with an external system installed. Deleting any existing backup copy

1680-641: The ARPANET and delete the experimental Creeper program (the first computer worm, 1971). On November 2, 1988, Robert Tappan Morris , a Cornell University computer science graduate student, unleashed what became known as the Morris worm , disrupting many computers then on the Internet, guessed at the time to be one tenth of all those connected. During the Morris appeal process, the U.S. Court of Appeals estimated

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1760-550: The Ethernet principles on their network of Xerox Alto computers. Similarly, the Nachi family of worms tried to download and install patches from Microsoft's website to fix vulnerabilities in the host system by exploiting those same vulnerabilities. In practice, although this may have made these systems more secure, it generated considerable network traffic, rebooted the machine in the course of patching it, and did its work without

1840-618: The Police National Computer as a precautionary measure; during that time, officers had to ask other forces to run routine checks on vehicles and people. Although almost all of the advanced malware techniques used by Conficker have seen past use or are well known to researchers, the virus's combined use of so many has made it unusually difficult to eradicate. The virus's unknown authors are also believed to be tracking anti-malware efforts from network operators and law enforcement and have regularly released new variants to close

1920-507: The 2009 Black Hat Briefings that Ukraine is the probable origin of the virus, but declined to reveal further technical discoveries about the virus's internals to avoid tipping off its authors. An initial variant of Conficker did not infect systems with Ukrainian IP addresses or with Ukrainian keyboard layouts. The payload of Conficker.E was downloaded from a host in Ukraine. In 2015, Phil Porras, Vinod Yegneswaran and Hassan Saidi – who were

2000-451: The 512-bit hash as a key . The hash is then RSA -signed with a 1024-bit private key. The payload is unpacked and executed only if its signature verifies with a public key embedded in the virus. Variants B and later use MD6 as their hash function and increase the size of the RSA key to 4096 bits. Conficker B adopted MD6 mere months after it was first published; six weeks after a weakness

2080-732: The ANPR Intercept Unit to combat serious and organised criminals using the road network. In 2016, the unit merged with firearms, dogs and the Tactical Aid Unit to form the Specialist Operations Branch. The Roads Policing Unit (RPU) and TVIU often work hand in hand in implementing certain tactics such as Tactical Pursuit and Containment for which the TVIU & RPU are the only departments trained in this field. Aviation support has been provided to

2160-507: The Conficker Cabal, includes Microsoft , Afilias , ICANN , Neustar , Verisign , China Internet Network Information Center , Public Internet Registry, Global Domains International, M1D Global, America Online , Symantec , F-Secure , ISC, researchers from Georgia Tech , The Shadowserver Foundation, Arbor Networks, and Support Intelligence. On 13 February 2009, Microsoft offered a $ USD 250,000 reward for information leading to

2240-709: The Defender call sign India 66 for the Games which flew on average seven hours a day. The Defender flew around 1,200 hours each year including targeting terrorists and major criminals. The Defender was decommissioned in December 2013. In the United Kingdom, two other police services have also operated the Defender 4000 – the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Hampshire Constabulary . GMP also trialled

2320-703: The GMP by the National Police Air Service (NPAS) since 2012. NPAS operates a EurocopterEC135 T2+ helicopter call sign NPAS 21 from City Airport Manchester , which provides support to all neighbouring police forces. GMP had formed an Air Support Unit in 1989. GMP's first helicopter was a Eurocopter AS355 Twin Squirrel . In c. 2001, the GMP was operating a McDonnell Douglas MD 902 Explorer helicopter call sign India 99 which remained in service until 2008. The MD 902 Explorer flew more than 8,000 hours dealing with around 5,500 incidents and

2400-538: The Internet randomly, looking for vulnerable hosts to infect. In addition, machine learning techniques can be used to detect new worms, by analyzing the behavior of the suspected computer. A helpful worm or anti-worm is a worm designed to do something that its author feels is helpful, though not necessarily with the permission of the executing computer's owner. Beginning with the first research into worms at Xerox PARC , there have been attempts to create useful worms. Those worms allowed John Shoch and Jon Hupp to test

2480-545: The RPU's were divided into three strategic units, based at RPU 1 Leigh, RPU 2 Hyde & RPU 3 Chadderton. Due to the constraints on budgets and the latest review, the Road Policing Unit will lose a further 78 officers and in 2012 restructured/reduced to two RPU's based at Eccles and Chadderton. This has reduced the strength of the RPU to only 100 officers over a 5 shift system providing only 20 officers per shift to cover

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2560-483: The Trafford Centre, Arndale Centre and nearby St Ann's Square. Officers of the GMP, as in the rest of Great Britain, do not routinely carry firearms. Instead, the GMP maintains a firearms unit to provide them with a capability to deal with armed criminals. The Greater Manchester Police, Tactical Firearms Unit maintains Armed Response Vehicles , which transport armed officers to the scene. The GMP maintains

2640-485: The Windows 7 Beta was not publicly available until January 2009. Although Microsoft released an emergency out-of-band patch on October 23, 2008, to close the vulnerability, a large number of Windows PCs (estimated at 30%) remained unpatched as late as January 2009. A second variant of the virus, discovered in December 2008, added the ability to propagate over LANs through removable media and network shares . Researchers believe that these were decisive factors in allowing

2720-494: The Windows Update service. Variant E of the virus was the first to use its base of infected computers for an ulterior purpose. It downloads and installs, from a web server hosted in Ukraine, two additional payloads: Symptoms of a Conficker infection include: On 12 February 2009, Microsoft announced the formation of an industry group to collaboratively counter Conficker. The group, which has since been informally dubbed

2800-484: The arrest and conviction of the individuals behind the creation and/or distribution of Conficker. ICANN has sought preemptive barring of domain transfers and registrations from all TLD registries affected by the virus's domain generator. Those which have taken action include: By mid-April 2009 all domain names generated by Conficker A had been successfully locked or preemptively registered, rendering its update mechanism ineffective. Working group members stated at

2880-522: The city of Sheffield reported infection of over 800 computers. On 2 February 2009, the Bundeswehr , the unified armed forces of Germany, reported that about one hundred of its computers were infected. An infection of Manchester City Council's IT system caused an estimated £1.5m worth of disruption in February 2009. The use of USB flash drives was banned, as this was believed to be the vector for

2960-463: The computer to be remotely controlled by the worm author as a " zombie ". Networks of such machines are often referred to as botnets and are very commonly used for a range of malicious purposes, including sending spam or performing DoS attacks. Some special worms attack industrial systems in a targeted manner. Stuxnet was primarily transmitted through LANs and infected thumb-drives, as its targets were never connected to untrusted networks, like

3040-436: The consent of the computer's owner or user. Regardless of their payload or their writers' intentions, security experts regard all worms as malware . Another example of this approach is Roku OS patching a bug allowing for Roku OS to be rooted via an update to their screensaver channels, which the screensaver would attempt to connect to the telnet and patch the device. One study proposed the first computer worm that operates on

3120-452: The continental net a self-perpetuating tapeworm, probably headed by a denunciation group "borrowed" from a major corporation, which would shunt itself from one nexus to another every time his credit-code was punched into a keyboard. It could take days to kill a worm like that, and sometimes weeks." The second ever computer worm was devised to be an anti-virus software. Named Reaper , it was created by Ray Tomlinson to replicate itself across

3200-599: The cost of removing the worm from each installation at between $ 200 and $ 53,000; this work prompted the formation of the CERT Coordination Center and Phage mailing list. Morris himself became the first person tried and convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act . Conficker , a computer worm discovered in 2008 that primarily targeted Microsoft Windows operating systems, is a worm that employs three different spreading strategies: local probing, neighborhood probing, and global probing. This worm

3280-496: The domain name, added as in "trafficker", to avoid a "soft" c sound) which was used by early versions of Conficker to download updates. The first variant of Conficker, discovered in early November 2008, propagated through the Internet by exploiting a vulnerability in a network service (MS08-067) on Windows 2000 , Windows XP , Windows Vista , Windows Server 2003 , Windows Server 2008 , and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta. While Windows 7 may have been affected by this vulnerability,

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3360-508: The embedded programmable logic controllers of industrial machines. Although these systems operate independently from the network, if the operator inserts a virus-infected drive into the system's USB interface, the virus will be able to gain control of the system without any other operational requirements or prompts. Worms spread by exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems. Vendors with security problems supply regular security updates (see " Patch Tuesday "), and if these are installed to

3440-551: The end-user into running malicious code. Anti-virus and anti-spyware software are helpful, but must be kept up-to-date with new pattern files at least every few days. The use of a firewall is also recommended. Users can minimize the threat posed by worms by keeping their computers' operating system and other software up to date, avoiding opening unrecognized or unexpected emails and running firewall and antivirus software. Mitigation techniques include: Infections can sometimes be detected by their behavior - typically scanning

3520-560: The first to detect and reverse-engineer Conficker – wrote in the Journal of Sensitive Cyber Research and Engineering , a classified, peer-reviewed U.S. government cybersecurity publication, that they tracked the malware to a group of Ukrainian cybercriminals. Porras et al. believed that the criminals abandoned Conficker after it had spread much more widely than they assumed it would, reasoning that any attempt to use it would draw too much attention from law enforcement worldwide. This explanation

3600-439: The force has 325 special constables . GMP is headquartered at Central Park, Northampton Road, Newton Heath , Manchester. In December 2020, GMP was placed into special measures by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), after a watchdog report found that GMP did not record one in five crimes between July 2019 and June 2020. They estimated the force failed to log around 80,100 crimes,

3680-418: The historic Lancashire county area these borough police forces were Bolton Borough Police (1839–1969), Oldham Borough Police (1849–1969), Rochdale Borough Police (1857–1969) and Wigan Borough Police (1836–1969). In the historic Cheshire county area this included Stockport Borough Police (at least 1835–1967). The first chief constable of GMP was William James Richards. Richards had been the chief constable of

3760-407: The horses for duties around Greater Manchester. GMP has over 183 special constables , who are assigned to each of the twelve divisions. Special constables work alongside their regular counterparts and are mainly assigned to divisions and work within local policing teams (LPTs), however some divisions still allow officers to work within response teams when LPT's are not on duty. Between 2009 and 2012,

3840-698: The initial infection. A memo from the Director of the UK Parliamentary ICT service informed the users of the House of Commons on 24 March 2009 that it had been infected with the virus. The memo, which was subsequently leaked, called for users to avoid connecting any unauthorised equipment to the network. In January 2010, the Greater Manchester Police computer network was infected, leading to its disconnection for three days from

3920-633: The internet. This virus can destroy the core production control computer software used by chemical, power generation and power transmission companies in various countries around the world - in Stuxnet's case, Iran, Indonesia and India were hardest hit - it was used to "issue orders" to other equipment in the factory, and to hide those commands from being detected. Stuxnet used multiple vulnerabilities and four different zero-day exploits (e.g.: [1] ) in Windows systems and Siemens SIMATICWinCC systems to attack

4000-426: The largest known computer worm infection since the 2003 SQL Slammer worm. Despite its wide propagation, the worm did not do much damage, perhaps because its authors – believed to have been Ukrainian citizens – did not dare use it because of the attention it drew. Four men were arrested, and one pled guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison. Estimates of the number of infected computers were difficult because

4080-617: The late 1830s and Salford Borough Police , which began in 1844. Upon Manchester gaining city status in 1853, its police force changed its name to Manchester City Police to reflect its status. In 1926, Salford also became a city, resulting in Salford Borough Police becoming Salford City Police. These two city forces operated until 1968 when, as a result of compulsory amalgamation, as per the Police Act 1964 , Salford City Police merged with Manchester City Police, resulting in

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4160-421: The mayoral office. The first Mayoral election took place in 2017 , in which Andy Burnham was elected mayor. The area GMP polices is split into geographical divisions , with each Metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester being assigned one. In 2021, GMP grouped some divisions together to form command areas, the divisions that remain on their own are also still referred to as a command area. Each command area

4240-562: The new force of Manchester and Salford Police . This new force lasted only six years, when in 1974 the Local Government Act 1972 created the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester and with it, Greater Manchester Police. An increase of 284,241 acres (115,028 ha) in terms of policing area and 2,267,090 people over the abolished Manchester and Salford Police. Indirectly, GMP can also trace its heritage to

4320-424: The number of police officers would reduce by 1,800 over the next ten years. Burnham feared that pressure on the GMP was increasing due to terrorism and also because of a rise in violent crime in the region. Burnham told The Guardian , "There’s no question about it: GMP needs more officers. They are at their limits, probably beyond them, in terms of what they are dealing with. The chief constable has described it as

4400-462: The officers duties, usually with paid time, 8 hours per month are commonly covered to undertake their special constabulary duties at their normal place of work. Special constables are normally coordinated by the chief officer of the special constabulary, currently Michael Walmsley, and divisional commanders. Under the guidance of the chief constable, it was envisaged that the number of special constables within GMP would increase to 1,000 officers, within

4480-600: The performance of massive scale ephemeral artworks. It turns the infected computers into nodes that contribute to the artwork. Greater Manchester Police Greater Manchester Police ( GMP ) is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester in North West England . As of March 2020 , Greater Manchester Police employed 6,866 police officers, 3,524 members of police staff, and 560 police community support officers . Additionally,

4560-548: The police area. 2014 has seen this further reduced to 10–12 officers working the force area per shift as further cuts reduce officer numbers. In response to a rise in vehicle-related crime across Greater Manchester in the early 1980s, GMP formed the Traffic Area Support Services (TASS) unit, which among other vehicles, operated using a fleet of marked Ford Capris , as well as unmarked Lotus Sunbeam cars, which were externally downgraded to appear as

4640-410: The powerful men who run a national electronic information web that induces mass conformity. "You have the biggest-ever worm loose in the net, and it automatically sabotages any attempt to monitor it. There's never been a worm with that tough a head or that long a tail!" "Then the answer dawned on him, and he almost laughed. Fluckner had resorted to one of the oldest tricks in the store and turned loose in

4720-465: The public in trying to catch suspects. GMP then naming and shamed any convicted individuals over the riots. The following officers of Greater Manchester Police are listed by the Police Roll of Honour Trust as having died during the course of their duties: From November 2012 to May 2017, the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner was Tony Lloyd . The police and crime commissioner

4800-509: The same deficiencies exploited by the Blaster worm , Welchia infected computers and automatically began downloading Microsoft security updates for Windows without the users' consent. Welchia automatically reboots the computers it infects after installing the updates. One of these updates was the patch that fixed the exploit. Other examples of helpful worms are "Den_Zuko", "Cheeze", "CodeGreen", and "Millenium". Art worms support artists in

4880-527: The second layer of the OSI model (Data link Layer), utilizing topology information such as Content-addressable memory (CAM) tables and Spanning Tree information stored in switches to propagate and probe for vulnerable nodes until the enterprise network is covered. Anti-worms have been used to combat the effects of the Code Red , Blaster , and Santy worms. Welchia is an example of a helpful worm. Utilizing

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4960-583: The series' first airing and resulted in the TVCU receiving an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the public. In 2010, the TVCU was replaced by Vortex, which was based at Stretford Police Station. In June 2011, The Tactical Vehicle Crime Unit was reformed under the slightly different name of the Tactical Vehicle Intercept Unit. The unit continued to utilise a selection of high performance unmarked vehicles and officers worked alongside

5040-471: The short lived Manchester and Salford Police (1968 to 1974) and before that chief constable of Manchester City Police (1966 to 1968). Following his retirement on 30 June 1976, James Anderton became the new chief constable on 1 July 1976. Anderton was a controversial figure during his 15 years in office due to his outspoken style of leadership and hardline views on crime, policing and morality. In 1991, David Wilmot succeeded Anderton. In 2002, Michael J. Todd

5120-468: The systems they pass through. However, as the Morris worm and Mydoom showed, even these "payload-free" worms can cause major disruption by increasing network traffic and other unintended effects. The term "worm" was first used in this sense in John Brunner 's 1975 novel, The Shockwave Rider . In the novel, Nichlas Haflinger designs and sets off a data-gathering worm in an act of revenge against

5200-538: The time. Greater Manchester Police faced the problem of gun crime in Manchester , particularly in the deprived districts in south Manchester. Key gang leaders were jailed for life in 2009. By 2011, the city had shaken off the tag. On 14 October 2010, Greater Manchester Police posted details of all calls made to them in a 24-hour period on Twitter. The service posted details of every incident reported to its officers in 24 hours to demonstrate how much of their time

5280-480: The transport network. Greater Manchester Police is a partner in the following collaborations: The rank structure that the Greater Manchester Police use is the same as all other British territorial police forces, excluding London. The Greater Manchester Police also have a special constabulary with five ranks. These are the numbers of police officers for each rank: In June 2017, less than

5360-493: The user network services . Variant C of the virus resets System Restore points and disables a number of system services such as Windows Automatic Update , Windows Security Center , Windows Defender and Windows Error Reporting . Processes matching a predefined list of antiviral, diagnostic or system patching tools are watched for and terminated. An in-memory patch is also applied to the system resolver DLL to block lookups of hostnames related to antivirus software vendors and

5440-431: The virus changed its propagation and update strategy from version to version. In January 2009, the estimated number of infected computers ranged from almost 9 million to 15 million. Microsoft has reported the total number of infected computers detected by its antimalware products has remained steady at around 1.7 million from mid-2010 to mid-2011. By mid-2015, the total number of infections had dropped to about 400,000, and it

5520-488: The virus from spreading through removable media. Prior to the release of Microsoft knowledgebase article KB967715, US-CERT described Microsoft's guidelines on disabling Autorun as being "not fully effective" and provided a workaround for disabling it more effectively. US-CERT has also made a network-based tool for detecting Conficker-infected hosts available to federal and state agencies. Computer worm Many worms are designed only to spread, and do not attempt to change

5600-601: The virus to propagate quickly. Intramar, the French Navy computer network, was infected with Conficker on 15 January 2009. The network was subsequently quarantined, forcing aircraft at several airbases to be grounded because their flight plans could not be downloaded. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence reported that some of its major systems and desktops were infected. The virus had spread across administrative offices, NavyStar/N* desktops aboard various Royal Navy warships and Royal Navy submarines, and hospitals across

5680-478: The virus's own vulnerabilities. Five variants of the Conficker virus are known and have been dubbed Conficker A, B, C, D and E. They were discovered 21 November 2008, 29 December 2008, 20 February 2009, 4 March 2009 and 7 April 2009, respectively. The Conficker Working Group uses namings of A, B, B++, C, and E for the same variants respectively. This means that (CWG) B++ is equivalent to (MSFT) C and (CWG) C

5760-503: The worm. The evolving process of the malware shows some adoption to the common removal software, so it is likely that some of them might remove or at least disable some variants, while others remain active or, even worse, deliver a false positive to the removal software and become active with the next reboot. On 27 March 2009, Felix Leder and Tillmann Werner from the Honeynet Project discovered that Conficker-infected hosts have

5840-541: Was appointed to chief constable until his death in 2008. There was much press coverage of Todd's death in March 2008. Todd was seen as a man of action and got more "bobbies on the beat", with himself often doing so. GMP's Deputy Chief Constable became the acting chief constable until the appointment of Peter Fahy , previously head of Cheshire Police , as chief constable in September 2008. Police constable Ian Rodgers

5920-452: Was considered a hybrid epidemic and affected millions of computers. The term "hybrid epidemic" is used because of the three separate methods it employed to spread, which was discovered through code analysis. Independence Computer viruses generally require a host program. The virus writes its own code into the host program. When the program runs, the written virus program is executed first, causing infection and damage. A worm does not need

6000-477: Was discovered in an early version of the algorithm and a new version was published, Conficker upgraded to the new MD6. The DLL- Form of the virus is protected against deletion by setting its ownership to " SYSTEM ", which locks it from deletion even if the user is granted with administrator privileges. The virus stores a backup copy of this DLL disguised as a .jpg image in the Internet Explorer cache of

6080-555: Was established to save money and provide flexibility with the closest helicopter able to be deployed to an incident and if there were two incidents in the same force area then two helicopters could be sent if necessary. The Air Support Unit had also operated a fixed wing aircraft. In January 2002, GMP ordered a Britten-Norman Defender 4000 fixed wing aircraft for the Commonwealth Games in July. In July, GMP began operating

6160-505: Was estimated to be 500,000 in 2019. The origin of the name Conficker is thought to be a combination of the English term "configure" and the German pejorative term Ficker (engl. fucker ). Microsoft analyst Joshua Phillips gives an alternative interpretation of the name, describing it as a rearrangement of portions of the domain name trafficconverter.biz (with the letter k, not found in

6240-574: Was involved in the arrest of more than 700 criminals. In 2008, a new MD Helicopters MD 902 Explorer entered service to replace the older helicopter. Prior to the establishment of NPAS in 2012, the Air Support Unit had amalgamated with Cheshire Constabulary , North Wales Police and Lancashire Constabulary to form the North West Air Operations Group (NWAOG) in July 2011, operating four helicopters. The group

6320-540: Was scrutinised by the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Panel , made up of elected councillors from the local authorities in the police area. Before November 2012 the Greater Manchester Police Authority was the police governance. However, under new plans for an elected Mayor of Greater Manchester announced by George Osborne in November 2014, the position of Police and Crime Commissioner was removed and its responsibilities subsumed into

6400-430: Was the first GMP officer to be killed in the line of duty in 1975. His death occurred in a railway incident at Stockport . Since the formation of GMP, 20 officers have been killed or died in the line of duty. GMP then assisted with the reconstruction of Manchester following the 1996 Manchester bombing. In the 1990s, Manchester had gained the deriding tag of 'Gunchester', in reference to the city's high gun crime rate at

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