The Conficker worm, a nasty computer infection that has poisoned millions of PCs, will start ramping up its efforts Wednesday to use those machines for cybercrimes. It's unclear whether everyday PC users will even notice, but this is as good an excuse as any to make sure your computer is clean.
There are some easy ways to figure out whether a computer has the Conficker worm, and free tools available for getting rid of it.
One scary thing about Conficker is that it spreads without human involvement, moving from PC to PC by exploiting a security hole in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. The hole was fixed in October, but if your computer doesn't get automatic updates from Microsoft, you could be vulnerable.
Businesses have a bigger challenge, because Conficker has yet another method for evading detection. Once the worm is inside a machine, it applies its own version of the Microsoft patch that fixes the vulnerability Conficker exploited in the first place. So a business running a standard network scan, looking for unpatched machines, might come up empty-handed, even though some computers on the network are infected. (Source: msnbc.msn)