In 1992 the U.S. waited with dread for March 6, when the hyped up Michelangelo Virus was supposed to crash the entire electronic infrastructure. It never came; the breakout year for computer worms turned out to be 1999, when four notable ones struck networks around the world. The following year, the ILOVEYOU worm, written in VBS, infected millions of computers within hours of its release. Cyber attacks were now a transnational phenomenon and needed a coordinated transnational response.

On this day, November 22, in 2001, the Council of Europe in Strasbourg announced a treaty organization, open to every country, that would provide a framework for pursuing cyber criminals across national borders.

Specifically, the treaty addressed issues of copyright, network security, computer-aided fraud, and hate crimes. It set out procedures on handling the most common types of cybercrime, and established an always-on system by which countries could share information. The U.S. signed the convention in 2006.