Computer worm's purpose baffles

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- The Conficker botnet, released as an April Fools' joke, seems to still be around, a U.S. computer security officer said.

ABC News reported more than 5.5 million computers remain infected by the convincingly written rogue computer code that contained a vague threat April 1. Most of the infestations are in Vietnam, China and Brazil.

"The gang behind Conficker are no fools. They know coding, development cycles, crypto. They are clever and are watching us, their enemy in the security industry," Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for computer security company F-Secure, said at the Black Hat computer security conference last week in Las Vegas.

The report said there was an idea at the conference that perhaps Botnet's creators merely let the bug loose to wreak havoc on its own on the Internet. There is speculation that Botnet was meant to infect computers and merely send out spam.