Who are the people that make Trojans, PUPs, Worms and Viruses?

3295>And why can't these people be found through their IP address and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law? What are they hoping to accomplish through their trojan? Have any of you personally had your whole hard drive wiped out because of said trojan/virus/worm/PUP? Thanks for your input.
Reply:The makers of malware do not always have their purposes clear. There are some (who usually make worms, keyloggers, and trojans) that have intent to steal useful data, others (viruses and the like) which seem to only have intent to destroy data. It's usually very difficult to detect the creators of these things because of the propogation. If the creator of a worm walks up to an internet cafe, emails someone the worm, and just waits, eventually the worm will propogate by itself and you have an extremely difficult to trace situation.