The army of Conficker-infected machines, known as a “botnet,” could be one of the greatest cybercrime tools ever assembled. Conficker’s authors just need to figure out a way to reliably communicate with it.

Infected Machines need commands to come alive. So far, Conficker-infected PC’s have been trying to connect each day to 250 Internet domains. The hackers needs to get just one of those sites under their control to send their commands to the botnet. (The name Conficker comes from rearranging letters in the name of one of the original sites the worm was connecting to.)

Conficker has been a victim of its success, however, because its rapid spread across the Internet drew the notice of computer security companies. They have been able to work with domain name registrars, which administer Web site addresses, to block the botnet from dialing in.

Now those efforts will get much harder. On April 1, many Conficker-infected machines will generate a list of 50,000 new domains a day that they could try. Of that group, the botnet will randomly select 500 for the machines to actually query.

Microsoft recently issued a patch for the flaw targeted by the Conficker worm, and suggested the use of strong password to prevent much of the spread.

Damballa, a company focused on botnet detection, said Conficker was far from being a major problem in the typical enterprise.

“We do see Conficker compromises in enterprises, but they comprise a minority of the total number of compromises we see in these environments,” said Tripp Cox, vice president of engineering for Damballa. “The majority is the long tail of smaller botnets.”

According to virus researcher and anti-virus maker F-Secure Corp. The Conflicker worm does not affect Apple computers.

After the land rush period closes on March 24, 2009, the price of securing a .tel domain name will drop dramatically. Though it stands to reason that the availability of names might not be as favorable as during the .tel land rush, the price per year for the domain name drops from approximately $150 a year to around $20 a year.

Things to Know

How does the .TEL work?

Unlike traditional TLDs that map domain names to IP addresses, the .TEL maps domain names to contact information (personal and corporate) and keywords that are stored directly, making it universally accessible. see sample

Are there restrictions on the structure of my .TEL domain name?

The minimum number of characters in a .TEL domain is 3 and the maximum number is 63, not including the .TEL suffix. Every domain must contain at least one letter from a-z or “A to Z” in standard US ASCII script. No domain can begin or end with a hyphen, nor can a domain have a hyphen in the 3rd or 4th character position. A .TEL domain may not consist purely of digits. The .TEL naming conventions are described in detail in the Acceptable Use Policy.

To try out .tel without registering, click here