Apple hires...

It's been claimed that Conficker, the worm that caused havoc with business networks during the first few months of 2009, is making a comeback.

Also known as Downadup or Kido, Conficker was the most popular malware in August seen by BitDefender, more than eight months since it first started seeing it on its monthly top 10 e-threat lists.

It was on 43 per cent of the infected machines the company saw, much higher than the second most prevalent malware threat Win32.Induc.A, which accounted for 15 per cent of infections.

The Conficker worm started spreading seriously at the beginning of the year, at one point affecting millions of Windows PC around the world that hadn’t been patched, even though Microsoft released one soon after its discovery.

The House of Commons was one of the high profile networks hit by the worm.

Hype about Conficker increased over the next few months, finally reaching its peak on 1 April, when it was due to change its operation and contact new domains.

It was later discovered that the owners of Conficker had ordered it to deliver scareware, and monetise itself by existing as a large-scale distributor for somebody else’s malware.