ASEAN countries need increasingly sophisticated cybersleuths to track down increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals. Asean police chiefs were not worrying prematurely when they agreed at a meeting last week to have Interpol train their officers to fight online crime.

Bank hacking and online fraud have become more common as the use of the Internet spreads. But cybercrime also includes cyberterrorism, which can wreak far more damage on life and property and even threaten state security.

It is not too early to prepare for the present and the potential threat. According to a Washington Post report, 2006 was a 'year of computing dangerously' and 2007 will be even more treacherous.

Spam, ubiquitous but nevertheless illegal, shot up 60 per cent in the last two months of 2006, according to a US e-mail security firm, indicating it has essentially defeated e-mail filters. More than an annoyance, its proliferation points to online security weaknesses cybercriminals are ready to exploit. Experts estimate computer crooks took in US$2 billion last year by tricking people into parting with passwords and other data in 'phishing' scams that involved the use of spam and fake web sites. Increasing dependence on wireless transmission also exposes more security holes.

An American retail giant, TJX, is facing hefty claims after hackers used a laptop to download 200 million credit card numbers and four years' worth of customer transaction records from its wireless network. Banks have been guarding against the nightmare of surreptitious electronic transfers after the legendary case of a young Russian programmer who hacked Citibank for US$10 million in 1994.

More recently, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation's computer system in London nearly became a victim of a hacking attempt that reportedly would have cost the Japanese bank some US$400 million. Businesses have probably under-reported the number of hacking heists because these naturally do not inspire customer confidence.

Banks in Singapore have lost comparatively small amounts to 'skimmers' who captured cash card magnetic data and PINs to pilfer from ATMs. But the dangers are obvious, Singapore being a financial and regional MNC operations centre.

It is clear, too, that the transnational dimension of cybercrime requires the transnational scope of cooperation the Interpol training envisages for Asean cybersleuths. Electronic theft and fraud need only a mouse click to execute.

Detection and apprehension, often requiring cross-border action, cannot lag too far behind. Similarly, Asean cyberlaw enforcement officers have to learn and share effective methods of prevention and deterrence.

All that is the minimum required to fight shadowless criminals.