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While many are in a tizzy over the Conficker worm and it’s rumored April 1st attack, experts say most have nothing to worry about, and that the hype around it is likely to do more harm than the worm itself, which is simply scheduled to contact its control servers and update itself.

Here’s the deal. If you’ve already got the worm, it will perform the update above. If you don’t, you won’t miraculously wind up with it tomorrow. Not sure? Here’s an easy way to figure out if you have it:

Fire up your browser towards and try to load f-secure.com, secureworks.com, microsoft.com, norton, or any other security site. If you get a “page cannot be displayed” error for all the sites, you’ve probably got Conficker or similar malware on your computer.

Sure, there is a very, very slim chance the update could tell the worm to say, wipe your boot record or corrupt your registry, but it doesn’t make sense. Conficker’s main purpose is to add as many computers to its botnet as possible. The more zombies it creates, the more spam it can send out, which sad to say, means more money in the cyber criminals’ pockets. It’s all about the money, so disabling computers is the last thing they want to do.

Most malware is created for two specific purposes: to spy (check out yesterday’s article on the Chinese cyberspy ring) and/or to make money, either by creating a botnet to send spam or by stealing people’s financial information. Stolen financial info is either used by the scammer to clean out bank accounts or make fraudulent purchases, or sold for big bucks to other scammers looking to indulge in a little identity theft.  The botnets themselves can be very lucrative, too. Many botnet creators lease them out to spammers and scammers for a nice fee.

If you don’t have the worm, just keep doing what you’re doing, and make sure your anti-virus software is up to date. If you do have it, here’s a list of sites that can help you clean up your system:

Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool: http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx

F-Secure removal utility: ftp://193.110.109.53/anti-virus/tools/beta/f-downadup.zip

McAfee’s removal tool: http://67.97.80.71/vil/conficker_stinger/Stinger_Coficker.exe

The bottom line is tomorrow is not likely to bring any catastrophic cyber events. The Internet will not be kicked off the air and your computers will not self destruct. Promise!  (Ed. note: we can’t really promise, sorry)

Read[PCWorld]