John Bumgarner of the independent US Cyber Consequences Unit (US-CCU) has researched a number of connections between the two pieces of malware. He believes from analysing Conficker that its activation date – April Fool’s day 2009 – was chosen because it was the 30 year anniversary of Iran being declared an Islamic Republic. Conficker’s job was to attack Iranian Government computers in advance, probing for weaknesses and compromising machines for the more disruptive payload unleashed by Stuxnet 18 months later.”]