Conficker Confounded? Good Guys on Case

The Conficker computer worm -- even if it does nothing much to the world's computer networks -- seems to have created an international state of anxiety. But some computer scientists say they may have the bug under control.

"We pulled off a bit of a coup," Dan Kaminsky, a computer security specialist for the firm IOActive, wrote in an e-mail to us.

What did they do? Well, Conficker, sophisticated as it may be, is really nothing more than lines of code -- letters and numbers, written by hackers -- which Kaminsky and colleagues have been able to read and probe for mistakes. Over the weekend, they report, they were able to create a detection tool that would show computer network operators if their systems had been infected.

"We saw an opportunity to manage the risks that Conficker introduces in a clean, straightforward manner, with just a little bit of work over a weekend. I'm pretty happy it worked out!" said Kaminsky.

You may recall that computer engineers said Conficker seemed quite sophisticated for a piece of so-called "malware." It is not, strictly speaking, a computer virus; instead, it seems designed to get stealthily into people's machines and take control of them en masse -- though just for what, is unclear.

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