Vexing computer worm to evolve on April Fool's Day

A tenacious computer worm that has wriggled its way onto machines worldwide is set to evolve on April Fool's Day, becoming harder to exterminate, but not expected to wreak havoc

A tenacious computer worm that has wriggled its way onto machines worldwide is set to evolve on April Fool's Day, becoming harder to exterminate, but not expected to wreak havoc.

A task force assembled by Microsoft has been working to stamp out the worm, referred to as Conficker or DownAdUP, and the US software colossus has placed a bounty of $250,000 on the heads of those responsible for the threat.

The worm is programmed to modify itself on Wednesday to become harder to stop, according to Trend Micro threat researcher Paul Ferguson, who is part of the Conficker task force.

"There is no evidence of it going into attack mode or dropping any particular payload on April 1st," Ferguson said in an interview.

"What people controlling the botnet are doing is building in survivability because of efforts by the good guys to lessen the harm of this thing."

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