Microsoft has said it will offer $250,000 to the person who finds the creator of the Downadup/Conficker virus.

The worm has infected millions of computers accross the world since it was first discovered in October 2008. Microsoft has viewed the worm as a criminal attack and has said that anyone who discovers the creator will be offered a cash sum.

Microsoft has said that they do not want to let this behaviour go unknown and will try very hard to get the creator arrested.

The Conficker worm is a self replicating program that seems to take advantage of any computer that does not have the latest security updates installed and running.

It doesn’t spread over network connections, but sometimes over USB sticks and other storage. It guesses usernames and passwords and attempts to breach security. It can potentially steal private data and take control of computers.

It has been predicted that a total of around 12 million computers could be affected by the worm, and it is still searching the net for unprotected PC’s. For goodness sake, make sure your computer is always using the latest security patches from Microsoft.

(On a site updates footnote, I would like to apologise for the downtime that occured on Friday 13th – yes, that day – the dreaded DDOS attacks got hold of my server, but I hope this won’t happen again.)