Revelations about the use of Flame software to spy on computers throughout the Middle East, combined with reports that 34 leading US corporations, including Google, Northrup Grumman, Symantec and Dow Chemical, had had their networks penetrated by equally sophisticated software, serve as a wake-up call. Computer hacking has evolved from the playful pranks that software engineers used to play on one another to a more sophisticated level that is considerably more sinister. The growing threat of industrial espionage by professional criminals and potentially hostile groups over computer networks can no longer be ignored. To deal with the threat, security systems.
