Though Microsoft issued a rare out-of-band patch for the issue in October, a number of exploits taking advantage of the vulnerability continue to be a problem. This past weekend, Microsoft began receiving customer reports regarding increased malware attacks targeting the flaw. The attacks continued to gain momentum as the days went on, prompting Microsoft to post an advisory on its Security Response Center blog.

The vulnerability attackers are targeting is due to the Windows Server Service improperly handling remote protocol (RPC) requests. With a specially-crafted RPC, an attacker can take advantage of the security gap to take over a system.

The latest malware is detected by Microsoft as Win32/Conficker.A, W32/Conficker by McAfee and W32.Downadup by Symantec. 

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