At first it would be no more than a nuisance. No burning skyscrapers, no underground explosions, just a million electronic irritations up and down the land.
Tens of millions of pounds are wiped off the share price of companies like Amazon as fears grow that the whole Internet credit card payment network is now vulnerable and insecure.
Eventually, reports start to flood in that hundreds of thousands of personal bank accounts have been raided overnight.
Such a scenario, say some experts, is not only possible but likely in the near future.
Look, for example, at what happened to Estonia last week. Ever since the government of the Baltic state decided (rather tactlessly it must be said) to remove a war memorial to the Red Army from a square in the capital, Tallinn, Russian outrage has ensued.
This took the form of demonstrations and even riots. But then something extraordinary happened: quickly, and wholly without warning, the whole country was subjected to a barrage of cyber-warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, banks and newspapers.
Techniques normally employed by cybercriminals, such as huge remotely-controlled networks of hijacked computers, were used to cripple vital public services.
Nato has sent its top cyber-terrorism experts to Tallinn, with western democracies caught on the hop over the implications of such an attack.
The Estonian defence ministry said: "We've been lucky to survive this. If an airport, bank or state infrastructure is attacked by a missile, it's clear war. But if the same result is done by computers, then what do you call it? Is it a state of war? These questions must be addressed."
Estonia has blamed Russia, predictably enough - which, if true, would mean this is the first cyber attack by one sovereign state upon another.
To be fair, no one ever discovered where the plot was hatched, who carried it out, nor what their motives were.
It is more likely that the attacks on Estonia were similar to the attacks seen on Danish websites a couple of years ago, after a Jutland newspaper published cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed.
The Estonian attacks were more likely to be the work of angry young Russian hackers working alone than any sort of organised blitz by the Kremlin. But either way, the implications are serious.
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Edited by Rogerdodger, 27 May 2007 - 12:27 PM.
