Conficker worm sends instructions to grow botnet

CBC News, April 9, 2009

The Conficker worm has begun to update the machines it has infected with a new set of instructions to spread to other machines, security experts say.

Security researchers tracking the worm said some of the infected computers began receiving instructions on April 7 from other infected machines. Conficker is able to send updates to computers it has infected either by directing the computers to visit websites or through a peer-to-peer network of infected machines.

Last week Conficker had computer and internet organizations worldwide up in arms against it because it was known that a variant of the worm would begin accelerating the speed with which it reached out to websites on April 1.

It was thought the worm might send out instructions that day, but instead it appears to have waited a week before doing so, and rather than sending the instructions through a website, it sent them over the peer-to-peer network.

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