PC World has an article that indicates that the code is set to execute on April 1 - here's an excerpt from the article:
PCs infected with Conficker.c, the third version of the worm that first appeared late last year, will use a new communication scheme on April 1 to establish a link to the command-and-control servers operated by the hackers who seeded the malware. The date is hard-coded into the worm, which in turn polls any of a number of major Web sites, including Yahoo, for the date...
Read the PC World article.
What can be done to avoid infection?
The best thing that can be done is to make sure your virus and malware definitions are up-to-date before the 31st. There is a Microsoft Patch released in October that addressed the vulnerability and should be applied to all business and personal PCs. This should be enough to protect against the Conflicker Worm. On the other hand, personal computers are not much at risk since they are mostly behind firewalls and the Conflicker Worm doesn't attack through firewalls, business on the other hand have been infected by previous variations to the tune of about 9 million.
What are the symptoms of the ConFlicker Worm?
Wikipedia has a good write-up of the symptoms when a computer is infected.
You can review Microsoft posting about this situation at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx, there is a lot of information as well as a link to the patch.
At this point, you should be extra vigilant about protecting your PC: Patch Windows completely through Windows Update and update your anti-malware software as well. Make sure your antivirus software is actually running too, as Conficker may have disabled it.
As always, safe surfing,
Darrell Mishler
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