Why do people create malware?

[dolphin314etc]

I'm not talking about trojan horses designed to allow a computer to be controlled, and read out by another computer. That's spyware. I understand why people create spyware -- they think they can get information or money by stealing it through computer code.

But malware -- like the denial of service attack that just crashed twitter -- that's real hard for me to understand. It looks like a profitless act, or pure malice, with completely anonymous victims, who are harmed in ways that the perpetrator cannot know or imagine.

Why do people do that?

Is it just part of the Goof-On-Ya Syndrome? Is it part of the "Kilroy was Here" Syndrome? Is it something like grafitti "Tagging", or is it some kind of twisted malice that just seeks to scribble on the world and exercise personal power.

I don't believe in God. I barely believe in "Good" (just a few times a month I get a glimpse of it as it disappears around a corner), but malware has me convinced that "Evil" in a very pure form does exist and is endemic (if not ubiquitous) in the heart of man -- Heart of Darkness -- indeed -- in deed.

If computers came equipped with buttons that would create really high quality malware and send it out, and all the user had to do was give it a name and push the button, what percentage of the computer using population would be so twisted and so malicious to create millions of anonymous victims just to have the momentary feeling that they had "done something" and that the world was "effected by their conduct"?

Are the malware creators psychologically the little brothers of the people who go into schools and just shoot up as many childrden as possible before taking their own lives? Or are they like the Unabomber, who found it amusing to send out bombs in the mail, or like the Anthrax sender who got his kicks by disrupting the mail in Washington DC?

My speculation is that malware creators have some sort of desire to feel power by doing big goofs on other people and causing pain to other people. They probably have failed to attain power of attention by other more constructive means. They are losers, with a grudge, so now it's fun to get even with the world that has marginalized them.

I'm wondering if there could be a science of Cyber-Profiling that would be helpful, in addition to other methods to track down malware creators. I'm wondering if really stiff prison sentences, like the kind we now give to Bernie Madoff types, would have any effect on malware creators. If it's just a "goof" why go to jail for 50 years for it? Find some other goof -- maybe pulling limbs off of trees at night, or ringing doorbells, like they do in my little town.

All thoughts on this subject that are serious and careful are most welcome. People who simply wish to post abusive or goofy comments are encouraged to find some other question for those amusements. Let's make the answers for this question as serious and deep as the question itself, please.
Response to tempo1 (Top Contributor) amazing answer: So then, it appears that the Somali pirates are a better and truer model than the deranged teenager. The malware people have the goal of selling you back your system in working order as soon as you pay their ransom. They get cash, not psychic income from their fake maliciousness. They have greed but not malice -- it's just business -- get the ransom cash. That actually makes a lot of sense. So maybe the malware is not such a true sign of profound and inerradicable evil in the heart of man. It's just the ordinary mortal sin of greed, or for very poor people in Eastern Europe maybe just a creative way of making a living based on technical talent, like 3/4 of Manhatten does every day. I want your theory to be true. I want humanity to be redeemed from the slur that it is just plain bad to the bone in a crazy, irrational, mindless, horribly destructive way, that cares not who it hurts -- like in Black Sunday, or on 9/11.