Talk about a blast from the past.

I'd long since forgotten about Conficker, the complicated computer malware infestation that made headlines earlier this year as its "activation day," April 1, approached, sending millions of users into full-on panic over what the worm might do.

Ultimately April 1 came and went, and Conficker's impact was extremely mild, leading many to wonder whether the whole thing was just an elaborate hoax.

Well, it wasn't, and believe it or not Conficker continues to infect machines a year after the original Conficker worm was released online.

The latest tally on the number of infected machines? At least 7 million computers, according to researchers who operate servers on Internet domains that Conficker is programmed to access regularly.

Despite the crush of publicity about Conficker, what's even more surprising is that infections of the worm are actually continuing to increase. Credit the worm's sophisticated programming for that: New variants have proven extremely evasive and have found ways around the typical computer security defenses. Conficker also has a nasty habit of re-infecting a machine even after it's been removed, possibly due to holes it leaves behind for later exploitation.

Less industrialized countries appear to be bearing the lion's share of infected machines, which researchers have credited to their habit of running counterfeit copies of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft disables automatic security updates being delivered to any machines it determines are counterfeit, so they're naturally far more susceptible to infection by Conficker.

So what now? Conficker may very well be with us for the long haul. As for you, assuming you're running a legitimate version of Windows and have automatic updates turned on, and you have solid anti-malware software up and running and -- most importantly -- have that software up to date as well, you should be OK despite Conficker's continued reign.

[You can ping me on : talk2me4fun@gmail.com]