What's in it for the author of Conficker?
khafra: Worms aren't created by the likes of RTM(1) anymore; malware has been big business, and global, for quite a while now.  Conficker was probably created by a professional malware engineer, or a team of them, working for somebody like the Russian Business Network(2)--and in a jurisdiction that makes legal prosecution difficult.(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Business_Network