Built in only three years, using construction and design techniques and materials which did not exist a decade ago, it is the highest and the heaviest bridge ever built.Seen from a distance, and even from the foot of one of its colossal split, curving piers, it has a deceptive fragility.
The bridge, in the southern Massif Central, designed by the British architect Lord Foster, and constructed by French engineers, has pioneered techniques which will open the way to even bigger structures. It’s the job of the cyber police, such as the NHTCU, to change that.. The stunningly beautiful Millau Viaduct, opened by President Jacques Chirac yesterday, is a bridge to the future. And the phishing e-mails are already sent out by botnets.In the face of this growing evidence of hi-tech criminal activity, it is hard not to conclude that the computer gangsters have the edge – for now. “It now looks like it was an empty threat, although obviously a deeply unpleasant one,” says a company spokesman.The problems for law enforcement don’t get any easier. Botnet technology has combined with phishing, another major concern for the NHTCU. Phishing fools 5 per cent of recipients into divulging bank details, credit-card numbers, user names and passwords.

According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the number of spoof websites that are hosted on compromised broadband PCs has risen by more than 50 per cent. Blue Square is one of the largest interactive betting services in the UK. In October, a brief denial-of-service attack, cutting trade by 15 per cent, was followed by a poorly-written e-mail demanding €7,000 (£6,200). A phone call from a man with an Eastern European accent then threatened to send out pornographic child images in the company’s name.

Blue Square immediately went public to prevent a public relations disaster. Computer equipment was seized and examined.An FBI document obtained by The Independent gives detailed insights into the arrests. A botnet of up to 10,000 computers controlled from the UK was used for denial-of-service attacks on US businesses. What makes this really alarming is that botherds were hired by an American businessman through an intermediary to attack his competitors’ websites. The Moroccan-born American is now a fugitive.Attacks on firms here in the UK are continuing. “It’s now quite common for us to see that denial-of-service attacks are sophisticated and can be controlling 30,000 bots at time,” Beighton says.Matt Sergeant, a senior anti-spam technologist at Messagelabs, also understands the problem. From its work in filtering spam and viruses, Messagelabs reckons that 70 to 90 per cent of spam is sent by botnets.