An Internet worm may be coming after your computer Wednesday. Experts say the so-called Conficker worm could affect more than 1 million computers worldwide.
It’s not clear what the worm could do on April 1, but it is set to check in for additional instructions on that day.
Experts say it affects Microsoft users who could have picked it up by simply surfing the Web.
There are things you can do to protect yourself before Wednesday, however.
“Millions of people already have this virus. They probably don’t even know it. The best thing to do right now is to prevent it by installing that Microsoft patch that was released back in October,” Joseph Axne with IT Guru LLC said.
Axne says Windows XP users are the most vulnerable.
“Do a Windows update; get the latest and greatest critical security patches that are out there for the machine. Get those installed, get your anti-virus up to date and run a full scan,” Axne said.
Authorities say they really don’t know what the worm might do or whether it will do anything.
“That’s the scary thing. Right now, no one knows what the true payload of this thing is going to be,” Axne said. “No one really knows what’s going to happen. When we say most people have this, their systems are sitting waiting today for the instructions and once the instructions hit, that’s when we’ll know what actually is going on.”
The worm is not expected to affect Mac users.
This came from .
