The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center has begun six investigations into possible cyber-attacks on private computer systems during the last week of December and first few days of January. This level of incidents was regarded as "not beyond the norm". Some of these attacks involved infiltrations, while three others involved the "detection of hacker tools", specifically "distributed denial of service" tools. This type of tool places "daemons" inside unsuspecting computer systems. On command (or at a specific time) the daemons begin generating huge amounts of Internet traffic, shutting down the system due to overload. The government offers free software on its web site (www.nipc.gov) which can detect the presence of these tools on computer systems. --Stephen V Cole