Security experts at the Cyber Secure Institute have added up the bill that the nefarious Conficker worm cost and worked out that the world paid $9.1 billion bill as a result of its existance.

While there were  major Conficker-created problems on April 1st when hijacked computers went online and began communicating with controller domains and now numerous commentators are now downplaying the significance of the Conficker problem, the experts say. However according to the institute's Rob Housman this is a mistake.

"Just because the other guy in a fight doesn't pull the trigger when he's got the gun to your head, doesn't mean you won the fight," he said.

The simple fact is that the Conficker worm has infected vast numbers of computers around the world. The Conficker worm's impact should be seen in terms of wasted time, resources, and energies of the cyber-community, governments, companies and individuals.

Conficker is expected to stop functioning on May 3, 2009.