From DarkReading

But there are still 6.5 million machines infected, and worm continues to spread

After over a year of waiting for the sleeping giant Conficker botnet to come to life, some security researchers are now starting to think it may just be dead rather than dormant: they say the original creators of the Conficker botnet appear to have abandoned ship, leaving the worm to merely spread on its own via unpatched Windows machines.

"This botnet is dead in the water," says Vincent Weafer, vice president of Symantec Security Response. "At this point, we think the organization [behind it] has effectively abandoned it" since last May, he says.

But that doesn't mean Conficker still doesn't pose a threat: another group could take control of the 6.5 million machines worldwide still infected with the Conficker worm, Weafer says. "It is possible someone could come along and try to take it over. We do see cross-infection all the time."

Conficker's original operators couldn't activate the high-profile botnet without attracting too much attention, experts say, which may be why it's been dormant for so long. The Conficker Working Group, formed in February of 2009 and led by Microsoft, has been successful in neutralizing the botnet, closely tracking its movements, and in leading the cleanup efforts.     [More...] [Comments....]