Even so, the Honeynet Project says, the group has invaded computers operated by NASA and the the United States Navy.
But it is a strange sort of crime since the owners of the invaded computers probably were unaware of the foray, computer security experts said.
Conficker invaded computers in a particularly sneaky way and appeared to use very little bandwidth, making it even harder to detect.
From late August to late October 1999, the defendant invaded computers used by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Defense Department agency that monitors threats to the United States from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as well as conventional arms.
The report adds that cleaning recipients' invaded computers costs the company, even though 57percentt of companies rated phishing attacks as "minimal".
Last year's Nimda, a blended threat like Klez, boasted four different ways to invade computers.
Like drones, these weapons cross national boundaries at will; in the case of Olympic Games they invaded the computer controllers that run Iran's nuclear centrifuges, spinning them wildly out of control.
New Jersey's acting attorney general said the settlement served as a message that the authorities would protect citizens against anyone who invaded their computer privacy.
They said the teenager invaded 13 computers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., on June 29 and 30, 1999.
Mr. Klein called his client "a good, smart boy who made a big mistake," and said that the ease with which he invaded government computers showed there was a security problem.
Those first small-scale tests were surprisingly successful: the bug invaded the computers, lurking for days or weeks, before sending instructions to speed them up or slow them down so suddenly that their delicate parts, spinning at supersonic speeds, self-destructed.
