Intellectual Property Law

The 12-million-computer strong Conficker botnet will fall under human control on April 1, leading some to speculate feverishly about what horror awaits an unsuspecting internet on what may be our last April Fools' Day ever.

Will Conficker become an evil twin to Google that lets criminals easily search for the valuable secrets of people running unpatched, pirated copies of Windows in China and Brazil? Or is it a censorship-busting peer-to-peer network erected by lawless but well-meaning cypherpunks?  Most disturbing, will it learn at an exponential rate until it becomes self-aware and decides humanity's fate in a microsecond?

The imagination reels at the possibilities of a botnet that contains 20 percent more computers than the last doomsday worm, which, as you know, killed us all. With the April 1 deadline approaching, I thought I'd  better get my own apocalyptic prediction on the record now:

Conficker, like all the other botnets, will mostly send spam.

But tell us what you think. What would you do with a 12-million-node botnet? Submit and vote below.

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See Also:

• Estonia DDoS Attacks Make Tech Reporters Into Daring War Correspndants
• Air Force Colonel Wants to Build a Military Botnet
• Did Hackers Cause the 2003 Northeast Blackout? Umm, No