Beware: Conficker Saga Continues

April Fools Day came and went without the predicted catastrophe, which, of course, made all the doomsayers look like the boy who cried wolf one too many times. Perhaps, that's exactly what the Conficker worm was designed to do. When nothing happens as predicted, we drop our vigilant defenses, and that could be exactly what this crafty worm is counting on.

Launched on April 1, the Conficker worm waited silently until April 8 when it kicked into gear and began updating itself via Internet download. Still, nothing of note since the tech-heads aren't able to crack the heavily encrypted instruction set contained in the download. What they have been able to see is that Conficker has infected computers check with benign sites such as MSN and My Space to verify Internet access, then it checks the date and time.

Then, this downloaded update just deletes itself completely. In fact, the update includes instructions for Conficker to delete itself entirely on May 8.

And the research continues...