The biggest April Fool’s Day prank to be played this year is no laughing matter. There’s speculation the computer worm known as Win32/Conficker.A, which has already affected approximately 11.4 million Windows computers, may begin communicating with more computers via the Internet on April 1.The malware has a list of 50,000 potential domains to infect, and 500 of said domains may be contacted and infected Wednesday.Paul Ferguson, a researcher for Trend Micro, theorizes that authors of the virus have created the worm to spread other malware for a profit.  The worm has yet to do any type of severe harm to the computers. However, it downloads Trojans, shuts down security services and enables the computers from connecting to security Web sites.     The computer worm originally began wreaking havoc in Windows computers in October 2008. The virus was entering computers via securities holes.  Microsoft issued an update that patched the hole. But in February a new variant of the worm used another hole and auto-update functionality in order to enter the computers. The worm also patches the hole it entered through, making the computer no longer vulnerable. Microsoft said the authors of the worm most likely made this adjustment to ensure other malwares do not enter and take over the machine.  The worm can also spread via USB drives and shared networks. The malware has mainly affected corporations but has also reached many home computers. One company already infected with the malware is Southwest Airlines. The technical report from SRI International said the original Conficker worm affected 4.7 million IP addresses while the second version affected 6.7 million. Microsoft and some major security companies have been attempting to decode the worm, find the creator and find ways to stop the worm.Microsoft is offering $250,000 to anyone who can stop the Conficker worm. Microsoft has provided some security software for prevention of the Conficker worm, including: the Microsoft patch, the Microsoft Update for the autorun feature and the Conficker removal tool. The “vaccine” tool released by Panda blocks viruses spread by USB drives.The University has taken precautions to prevent this worm from infecting the campus. An e-mail was sent out to LSU IT contacts specifying that all Windows-operated machinery be updated and configured to download and install security updates automatically and be disabled of the autorun software. E-mail recipients were also informed to be extremely cautious when using portable devices.The IT office has been running vulnerability scans over campus to ensure all computer are equipped with the patch to block Conficker. Any computers not provided with block by Sunday were disabled.   “I’m not particularly worried about it,” said Sam Oliver, history sophomore. “I think anyone with the slightest understanding of what should and shouldn’t be done on a computer will miss the worst of it. Avoid the illegal downloads and run the occasional virus scan and you should be fine.”  —Contact Lindsey Nunez at [email protected]