Virus

Reports are pouring in now that Conficker, at last, has started doing its dirty work -- and that work is nothing which thousands of malware applications haven't done long before it: Sending out spam.

The activation is being deemed a "quiet" one, as Conficker's creators seem to want to take advantage of the powerful botnet they've built without drawing too much attention to themselves. As a result, Conficker may shape up to be a relatively innocuous exploit compared to some of its massively destructive predecessors, and that's undoubtedly a good thing.