It was an April fool’s day prank or a real threat; what exactly was the hyped latest variant of Conficker worm? Well, whatever it might be, the hyped latest variant of Conficker worm, which failed to hit on April 1, has certainly left the threat lingering and the computer users and security researchers guessing about what the creators of the notorious Internet worm are planning next.  

Speaking of the hyped latest variant of Conficker worm, Randy Abrams, the director of technical education for security company ESET, said, "Nobody knows what the motive is other than to create a botnet; at this point, all we can do is speculate."

According to some security researchers, the latest version of the malicious internet worm, Conficker, which infected millions of computer systems and networks worldwide, germinated silently with a changed domain generation algorithm, with newly generated domains, on Wednesday, but the Conficker update did not come into action and it’s silent, up to now.

Commenting on the latest version of Conficker worm that failed to hit on April 1, Stephan Chenette, Websense labs manager, said, "Much speculation has happened. What ended up happening has so far been nothing. So far it's been kind of a dud." However that doesn’t mean that the worm will not strike at all, Chenette cautioned. .

Security experts reckon that April 1, or April Fools' Day is often chosen by malware creators to launch their attacks, and if Conficker's update occurred on April 1, a malicious attack is impending in next few days.   
Chenette said, "April 1 is a special event. What bigger joke could malware authors play than something on April 2 or April 3?" According to Chenette, there is greater possibility that Conficker creators are waiting until the hype about the worm settle down and people go careless about the threat, before launching their malicious attacks.

Chenette said, "Something is going to happen, we're all certain. That purpose could be for sending spam or a denial of service attack. That purpose could be something much greater. We know it's going to be for monetary gain."

On the contrary, some security experts are just viewing the recent hype about the Conficker worm as a serious prank of April fool’s day. "I don't think it's a significantly larger threat than any of the large bots that are out there,” said ESET's Abrams. However, some more concerned security experts are advising people to get their computers fully armed and armored with best security and protection tools, in order to keep their machines safe from any potential Conficker attack.