In the UK, the Home Office has warned about a spate of attacks in recent months involving e-mail Trojans. "We have never seen anything like this in terms of the industrial scale of this series of attacks," said Roger Cumming (pictured), director of NISCC, the organisation charged with protecting the UK's critical infrastructure from electronic threats.

"This is not a few hackers sitting in their bedrooms trying to steal bank account details from individuals. This is aimed at organisations, targeted at gaining information and is extremely well organised and well structured," said Cumming.

It's the first time the NISCC has ever made such an announcement. The attacks have been ongoing for several months, and derive mostly from Asia, Cumming said. Hundreds of UK government departments have been especially subjected to attack, he added.

"The general threat from electronic attack and particularly malware is increasing," says a recent NISCC report. "Open source reporting indicates there was a substantial rise in virus infected email in 2003 compared with 2002, with the trend continuing in 2004."

"Malware attacks are also increasing in sophistication, particularly as Spam and other malware writers are combining techniques," the report continues. "This convergence of skills has led to the rise of so called 'blended threats,' mass mailer viruses and worms that use spam techniques to trick users into clicking on a malicious URL or attachment and then spread in a similar way to an Internet worm."