Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#1

Post by bbuffone » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 12:34 PM UTC

Being that today is April 1st - April fools day - and also the day Conficker computer virus was to download a new set of instructions. I was thinking what would I do with the 3-12 million computers at my beck and call.

Email resignation letters to everyone's boss. Insert Porn into everyone's PowerPoint slides

Pretty lame that's why I asked the question.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#2

Post by cperciva » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 12:41 PM UTC

Calculate the quintillionth bit of Pi. With ten million reasonably modern computers it shouldn't take more than 12-24 hours.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#3

Post by mooism2 » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 12:56 PM UTC

Seed torrents.

Hey, if everyone's upstream bandwidth is being soaked up by _The Wire_, other viruses won't be able to use it to send out spam.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#4

Post by ejs » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 1:10 PM UTC

Update all the people with ie6 to something newer

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#5

Post by bbuffone » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 1:21 PM UTC

ejs wrote: post #4

Update all the people with ie6 to something newer

Now that you mention it, I can't think of anything better for humanity.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#6

Post by bretthoerner » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 1:39 PM UTC

mooism2 wrote: post #3

Seed torrents. Hey, if everyone's upstream bandwidth is being soaked up by _The Wire_, other viruses won't be able to use it to send out spam.

Up-modded simply because of all things in the world you chose to seed _The Wire_. <3

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#7

Post by cperciva » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 1:40 PM UTC

bbuffone wrote: post #5

ejs wrote: post #4

Update all the people with ie6 to something newer

Now that you mention it, I can't think of anything better for humanity.

You have a very limited imagination.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#8

Post by dmanxiii » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 2:00 PM UTC

Folding@home. Or other peoples homes.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#9

Post by ObieJazz » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 2:16 PM UTC

ejs wrote: post #4

Update all the people with ie6 to something newer

Replace all copies of IE with a skinned, renamed version of Firefox that calls itself IE 9.

Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?

#10

Post by chaosmachine » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 2:30 PM UTC

Synchronize the system clock, set the volume to maximum, and then, at the right moment, and with perfect synchronicity, each computer would play back a prerecorded speech claiming to be a message from God...