"The price of keeping the status quo is you're going to run into more and more incidents where it'll be difficult to track down and prosecute criminals,'' Miller said.

Computer attack, unlike murder or robbery, is still not universally recognized as a crime. Laws to fight it are typically found only in industrialized nations that depend on computers, said Stein Schjolberg, a Norwegian judge who tracks computer criminal laws around the globe

In the Love Bug case, investigators in the Philippines had to delay a raid for several days while prosecutors searched for laws that could apply.

During the early 1980s, hackers targeting U.S. government computers often routed attacks through the Netherlands to make tracing and prosecution difficult, said Tom Talleur, a KPMG analyst who was formerly NASA's top investigator for high-tech crimes.

"Some of them were very crafty back then and knew the Netherlands was a country that didn't have a cyber law,'' he said. "It's easy to do that with other nation-states today.''

The Netherlands has since passed such a law.

The European treaty under discussion would require countries to pass laws against hacking, computer fraud and online child pornography, and set penalties, preserve evidence and cooperate in international investigations.

Several other countries, including India and Thailand, are independently considering laws against computer crimes.

Investigators faced with cybercrime are often hampered by a lack of resources, so criminals stealing vital information and destorying files can stay a few steps ahead of the police, said Susan Brenner, a computer crime expert at the University of Dayton Law School in Ohio.

And even if a suspect is caught, jurisdictional issues arise because of the global nature of such attacks. The European treaty addresses extradition but, as drafted, does not envision an international court.

The Internet's worldwide reach creates other legal challenges as well. While Germans prohibit spreading Nazi propaganda, for instance, such speech is protected in the United States. Copyright and trademark violations are also difficult to pursue across borders, as are cases of fraud involving e-commerce.

The United States has one of the world's strongest hacking laws, covering viruses, unauthorized access and computer fraud.

David Kennedy, director of research services at security firm ICSA.net Inc. in Reston, Va., said many countries without specific hacking laws are able to stretch existing statutes.

But even with such liberal interpretations, he said, delays are possible while nations negotiate details.

Even a short delay could allow enough time to delete evidence, experts say.

Western goverments admit their laws have not kept pace with fast-changing technology.

The French Foreign Ministry said cyber crime -- which includes offences ranging from credit card fraud to spreading child pornography -- was growing exponentially as more and nore households hooked up to the Internet.

"Network intrusions and the spreading of malicious programmes, which were previously perpetrated by students or computer experts, are now within the reach of the majority of Internet users," it said in a briefing document.

But the ministry said computer crimes still lacked visibility, partially because many individuals were unaware they were being attacked and companies were reluctant to report security breaches for fear of harming their share price.

Experts say high-profile attacks like the ones which paralysed major commercial sites like Yahoo! and Amazon.com in February are likely to multiply as online services migrate to new platforms such as mobile phones.

EUROPE WARY OF "BIG BROTHER" APPROACH

The three-day meeting in Paris will bring together judges, police, diplomats, business leaders and civil liberties groups.

Differences have already appeared in the U.S. and European approaches to tackling the problem.

The United States favours a rapid and flexible solution such as the creation of an international cyber police.

But Europe, worried that stricter policing of the Internet could encourage "Big Brother"-style state prying into personal affairs, prefers judicial cooperation along traditional lines.

Recommendations from the meeting, which will be jointly chaired by France and Japan, will be taken up by G8 leaders when they hold their next summit in Okinawa in July.