Credit: Stephen Webster

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Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of the Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, admits it crossed his mind last year that he might die in a plane crash caused by a cyber attack. Kaspersky is a man of eclectic tastes and boyish humor; when we met in his office on the outskirts of Moscow, he was munching a snack of sweetened, freeze-dried whole baby crabs from Japan, and at one point he showed me a pair of men's undergarments, bought on a Moscow street, that had been stamped "Protected by Kaspersky Anti-Virus." But he grew quite serious when the subject turned to the days leading up to April 1, 2009.

That was the date a virulent computer worm called Conficker was expected to receive an update from its unknown creator--but nobody knew to what end. A tweak to Conficker's code might cause the three million or so machines in its army of enslaved computers, called a botnet, to start attacking the servers of some company or government network, vomit out billions of pieces of spam, or just improve the worm's own ability to propagate. "It's like if you have a one million army of real soldiers. What can you do?" ­Kaspersky asked rhetorically. "Anything you want." He let that sink in for a moment. "We were waiting for April 1--for something. I checked my travel schedule to make sure I didn't have any flight. We had no idea about this functionality. Security officials were really nervous." In the end? "Nothing happened. Whew! Whew!" Kaspersky cried out. He crossed himself, clasped his hands in a prayerlike pose, and gazed toward the ceiling.