On Jan. 24 Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner for enterprise and information society, was discussing the finer points of fighting cybercrime during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Less than 24 hours later he announced the latest cyberattack. Industry heavies such as Richard Li, chairman of Pacific Century CyberWorks, one of Asia's leading communication and broadband companies, listened in stunned silence as Liikanen stood up at a Davos luncheon and read out the news flashing across the screen of his Nokia Communicator: a fast-spreading Internet "worm" called Slammer had begun to sow chaos. The attack, which began about 5:30...
