Conficker Worm Strike Reports Start Rolling In

Editor's Note: The following was written in the spirit of April Fool's Day. Brian is following the story and if there are real reports of outbreak, he'll report them in a separate post.

Reports are trickling in about the impact from the Conficker worm, as infected systems passed zero hour at midnight and began downloading additional malicious components.

Here's a quick roundup of some of the more notable incidents caused by Conficker so far, according to published reports:

- A nuclear missile installation near Elmendorf Air force Base outside of Anchorage, Alaska briefly went on a full-scale military alert after technicians manning the bunker suspected that several of their control systems were infected with Conficker.

According to wire reports, the remote facility temporarily moved to Defense Condition (Defcon) 3 in the pre-dawn hours, but quickly backed down from that posture. An airman at the installation who asked not to be identified blamed the mishap on "way too much caffeine" consumed by occupants inside the secluded underground control room. The airman said the facility's lead engineer became agitated and inconsolable after watching an Internet broadcast of Sunday night's hard-hitting 60 Minutes expose' on the Conficker worm entitled, "The Internet is Infected."

- In Iceland, Conficker brought a brief thaw to the long economic winter that began last year with the government's inexorable slide into bankruptcy. According to local news reports, shortly after midnight local time, an ATM in the capital city of Reykjavik began spewing 100-Krona notes. Banking officials there reportedly said the Microsoft Windows-based based bank system began disbursing the bills after a local prankster crammed an infected USB stick into the maw of the teller machine.

- Londoners woke up to find the iconic clock tower Big Ben stopped at precisely one minute till midnight. The British tabloids blared that the giant timepiece had been felled by the Conficker worm. But security officials reasoned that the beloved landmark -- legendary for its reliability -- would have stopped exactly one minute later had the expected 12:00 a.m. updates to Conficker actually been the culprit. Several members of Parliament are now calling for a full investigation into the incident.

- In Waukesha, Wis., Leroy "Mac" MacElrie, 64, turned himself in to local police, claiming he was the author of the original Conficker worm, and that all of the subsequent versions were mere copycats. According to charging documents, MacElrie said he wrote the worm to get back at Microsoft founder Bill Gates for "not stopping spam by 2008 like he said he would." The man was released on his own recognizance, but several hours later a local television station captured footage of the man standing on a nearby street corner repeatedly shouting "I'm the confickter!"

Read on after the jump for more Conficker madness.

In case you haven't guessed it yet, APRIL FOOLS!!! Seriously, if we get any real news about outages, deaths, or disruptions actually caused by Conficker today, you will read it here first.