The war on terrorism: cyberterrorists beware. (Up front: news, trends & analysis).

Hackers "know computers inside and out, how to make them dance the dance and sing the song," a computer hacker-endorsing Web site claims. With more companies on alert about computer system break-ins and the need to protect privileged information, the hacker's "song and dance" is becoming increasingly vulnerable to government intervention.

A Bush administration anti-terrorism proposal, which has elements that were included in the Uniting and Strengthening America by Promoting Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, would affect computer hackers -- commonly referred to as "cyberterrorists" -- by prescribing punishment to anyone who "knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command and, as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization" to an Internet-connected computer. In a letter to the National Security and Telecommunications Advisory Committee, President George W. Bush vowed to protect information about corporations' and other organizations' vulnerabilities from "information warfare and malicious hacking."

Recent hearings by the U.S. House Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations suggest that computer hackers have been getting the upper hand on the government, requiring federal agencies to tighten their current level of security. Failure to do so could have a negative impact on other companies, as was evidenced by last summer's Code Red worm virus. Intended to cause outages to the White House Web site only, the virus ultimately spread throughout the Internet and infected more than 400,000 computers, according to the CERT Coordination Center, an organization that studies Internet security vulnerabilities.

What do this and other recent examples of cyberterrorism mean for international security? These attacks "foreshadow much more devastating Internet threats to come," Keith A. Rhodes, chief technology officer of the General Accounting Office, said at a recent House hearing. "There is a growing risk that terrorists or hostile foreign states could severely damage or disrupt national defense or vital public operations through computer-based attacks on the nation's critical infrastructures."

To help the government and private companies protect themselves against cyberterrorism, various organizations are developing tools to protect computer-based information. For instance, researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech University, and Columbia University are developing a distributed data mining system that can protect collaborating companies against intrusion and fraud. This Intrusion Detectors project is also intended to create a global data mining system that will let companies share information about attackers in order to protect against future intrusion.