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The presidential campaign is turning a focus to cyberterrorism. Democrat Barack Obama has unveiled plans for a "national cyber advisor" position as well as updated standards for protecting computer-based infrastructures if he is elected. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has spoken of the need for increased cyber security in recent weeks as well. Already this year, the current administration has increased its efforts to protect America from Internet-based attacks, with plans for a $30 billion effort to expand federal network monitoring over the next seven years.

Hackers often harness the combined power of thousands of virus-infected personal computers to pump out spam e-mail or disable targeted servers by overwhelming them with Internet traffic. Now an Air Force colonel is suggesting the U.S. military build its own "botnet," or network of remotely controlled computers, to be ready to attack the computer networks of foreign enemies. The proposal Col. Charles Williamson III outlined in the May edition of the Armed Forces Journal highlights the creative cyberwarfare strategies being hashed out by the military.

Computer attacks typically don't inflict physical pain on their victims. However, in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images. The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.

Computer attacks typically don't inflict physical pain on their victims. However, in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images. The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.

In Late April last year, about 1 million computers under botnet control started attacking the Estonian government's computers in a denial of service assault. The onslaught continued for three weeks. In the aftermath of this cyber warfare incident, NATO provided the Estonian government with some help in restoring the computer systems and investigating the attacks. Considerable evidence reportedly pointed to computers in Russia as the source of the commands, but Russia has denied any involvement.

New-age warfare is here. Governments and Internet security firms are quietly gearing up for the potential onslaught. Don't think that cyber warfare is merely fuel for novel writers. Cyber attacks are being waged in increasing numbers. Computer network attacks are often perpetrated by gangs of criminal hackers attempting to break into a system for financial gain. However, some criminal hacker groups are starting to test the same strategies on government agencies.

How do you respond when hit by a cyber attack tsunami? That's the question Cyber Storm II, the most comprehensive cyber exercise ever held in the U.S., was designed to answer. Forty private sector companies, 11 Cabinet-level agencies, 10 states and five countries were involved in the March exercise, which examined the processes, procedures, tools and organizational response to a multi-sector coordinated attack through, and on, the global cyber infrastructure.

Cyber threats like NetSky, Mydoom and Parite are the bane of IT departments around the globe, but artist Alex Dragulescu has found subtle beauty deep within the dangerous computer code that can bring down networks and bombard e-mail inboxes with murderous spam. Dragulescu has peeled back the code behind the world's worst tech bugs and rendered stunning images from it. The Romanian-born MIT researcher and artist was commissioned to fashion the artwork by MessageLabs, a computer security company that sought to put a face -- or at least a shape -- on computer viruses.

After working for years to prevent cyberterrorist attacks on the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security has approached the private sector for help. At a talk given to information security professionals at the RSA Security Conference, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned that a cyberterrorist attack would hurt the U.S. as much as the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings on Sept. 11, 2001. Citing the denial of service attack that shut down Estonian government computers last year, Chertoff said the Internet enables terrorists to increase the damage they cause.

Can you recall the five worst phishing scams to grace your e-mail in-box? Can you spot a genuine e-mail from your financial institution or government agency? Don't feel too technologically challenged if your answer is no to either -- or both -- of these questions. Even security experts are hard-pressed to choose the worst phishing scams. Prize-winning phishing scams are not usually tracked by security experts the way computer viruses are.