Conficker Mania
March 31, 2009 (CNN) Remember the dire predictions surrounding the "millennium bug?" The doom-and-gloom scenarios bandied about by security analysts on how computers could act when their clocks turned to January 1, 2000? Well, researchers are hoping that a potential April Fools' time bomb -- the Conficker.c that is supposed to hit computers on April 1 -- turns out to be equally unfounded. But realizing that hope alone is not a prudent option, here is a primer on the worm so you can adequately prepare yourself -- and your computer. Conficker.c is a worm, a malicious program thought to have already infected between 5 million and 10 million computers. Those infections haven't spawned many symptoms, but on April 1 a master computer is scheduled to gain control of these zombie machines, said Don DeBolt, director of threat research for CA, a New York-based IT and software company. The program could delete all of the files on a person's computer, use zombie PCs -- those...