The world's telecommunication networks reach beyond national boundaries and computer intruder activities have occurred internationally as well as throughout the United States. The number of attempted intrusions through international gateways from abroad is increasing and at least 20 foreign governments in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America have carried out economic intelligence gathering [6].
There have been few indications that computer undergrounds within foreign countries carry overt political agendas.
The report ``Electronic Intrusion Threat to NS/EP Telecommunications'' indicates that individual computer intruders probably would not launch orchestrated attacks on NS/EP systems and open source literature provides little significant evidence that foreign intelligence services have directly targeted, penetrated, or compromised the PSN in the United States [19]. However, there have been several cases of foreign computer intruders targeting systems in the United States and there is a large amount of circumstantial evidence and speculation regarding foreign adversaries, such as Libya, Iraq, and Iran, targeting networks in the United States [19].