How a Brainy Worm Might Jack the World's PCs on April 1

From Gizmodo -

On April 1, the Conficker worm will activate. And the scariest thing is that there are possibly millions of infected PCs waiting to be linked together on that date to do its bidding. The second scariest thing is that no one really knows what its creator is going to do with this virtual army on that date, when it's scheduled to contact a server for instructions. It's so bad, Microsoft has a running $250,000 bounty for the author, dead or alive.

The NY Times suggests several possibilities, the most sinister being a "Dark Google," that would let bad people scour zombie machines all over the world for data to sell to other bad people.

So what will really happen? Conficker's creator can do whatever he wants with his army. Launch massive denial-of-service attacks, setup the "Dark Google" syndicate, target millions of new machines, or generate a tidal wave of spam that will crash against servers all over the world. But whatever Conficker's results, it will certainly set a terrible precedent: it will lead others to further develop its concept in frighteningly new directions.