I never even heard of this virus until today and there was widespread joy that it wasn't as damaging as expected, but it could a been a lot worse. I call bullshit and say it was just someone's April Fools joke.
The Conficker A, B, C, and D variants surfaced in November and December of 2008, and Feb. 20th and March 4th of this year, respectively. That having been said, the hackers are most likely lying low and not playing their entire hand right now. The worm's programming included a change in tactics on April 1: The estimated 3 million to 12 million computers infected by Conficker were told to step up their attempts to "phone home" for commands. But that seemed to be the only sign of life from the bug. "One thing we're not seeing is any mass malicious activity," said Joris Evers, an analyst with McAfee. "The Internet today is working just as well as it was working yesterday." The worm can take control of unsuspecting PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. But its creators likely want to use their vast "botnet" to send spam or perform other cybercrimes, and not to bring down the Internet. That's one reason analysts say the people behind the virus will probably wait to send any commands. "Everyone who is fighting Conficker is on high alert," Evers said. http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090401/ap_on_hi_te/tec_conficker_countdown
http://download.nai.com/products/mcafee-avert/documents/combating_w32_conficker_worm.pdf This links to a McAfee write up on the worm. The PDF describes the symptoms and removal of the worm.
maybe one of the antivirus software guys had something to do with this. just think how many antivirus software packages were sold because of all the publicity surronding this overhyped threat.