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A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said.

The dreaded Conficker computer worm is stirring. Security experts say the worm's authors appear to be trying to build a big moneymaker, but not a cyber weapon of mass destruction as many people feared.

The Conficker worm, which did not bring the Internet to its knees or do much of anything else on April 1, continues to evolve in ways that have security experts scratching their heads about what may be the ultimate goals of the unknown bad guys behind the malware.

Estimates of the number of computers infected with the Conficker worm run from 1 million to 12 million. The malware's deadline is April 1, 2009, but no one really knows what will actually happen to the infected computers.

SAN FRANCISCO — "Hey Alice, look at the pics I took of us last weekend at the picnic. Bob"