The press has been covering the issue of the Conficker worm since it began to spread especially due to the fact that the worm has been exploiting a rare Microsoft patch, but with April 1 approaching, the articles covering the subject have exploded.  

 

Conficker (a.k.a. Downadup) is the biggest worm that attacked PCs during the last couple of years by the number of infected computers. The worm takes advantage of an "out-of-cycle" Microsoft patch and gets a hold of the computer. Microsoft did what it could to stop the worm. The software giant patched the Windows bug with an emergency update in October 2008 and offered a $ 250,000 to anyone who could help them get its hands of the one who is behind the worm.

 

However, a second variant of Conficker was unleashed in January and has infected millions of PCs so far. The second version is a tougher strain that includes a number of new defensive measures.

 

The Conficker worm threatens not only personal computers. Business networks, systems and networks controlling services such as subways, electric power, water and several other are vulnerable. Just think about a nuclear power plant and a Conficker attack that could shut down the system. 

 

"Regardless of the outcome, the Conficker worm event again points to the necessity to be vigilant, and to develop dynamic security solutions that protect our world's infrastructure from cyber attack," said Tyler Williams, Chief Executive Officer of Wurldtech Security Technologies, a Vancouver-based security firm that provides cyber-risk solutions to critical industrial sectors, according to Fox Business. 

 

The Wurldtech Security Technologies executive said the company will soon announced an alliance with global energy companies with the goal of reducing the potential for cyber attacks. 

 

According to the latest estimates, about 12 million PCs have been infected with the Conficker worm since it was first unleashed into the World Wide Web, although the number of infected PCs differs depending on the source of the estimation. The initial Conficker version generated about 250 possible domains per day that it could potentially use to route instructions from the hacker controllers, but the latest version of the worm is capable of generating a lost of as many as 50,000 URLs each day.   

 

The fact that no one knows what could happen on Wednesday is the main element of stress in this equation. Of course, the speculation is enormous. Most industry experts said the massive botnet could go on a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) rampage, while others believe that this is just a big, giant April Fools prank.