In 1988, Robert T. Morris let loose a worm that brought down 10 percent of the Internet and caused $15 million in damage.

The first person ever tried and convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Morris and other hackers were breaking into systems and tinkering with million-dollar business transactions before most people had ever heard of a Web site.

Thirteen years later, with Internet transactions totaling more than $8 billion annually, cyberspace has become a high-tech environment where an exploding number of crimes are threatening business security.

Because of the complex nature of cyber crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is teaming up with the private sector to stop hackers in their tracks.

On Thursday, FBI Special Agent George Heuston, who works on a high-tech task force with the Hillsboro Police Department, rolled out a national program, InfraGard, to Bend businesses during a seminar at the Shilo Inn Convention Center in Bend.

Designed to provide members a forum for education and training on infrastructure vulnerabilities, InfraGard also serves as an avenue to report illegal intrusions.

Heuston said his Portland-based chapter of InfraGard is reaching out to communities such as Bend to increase awareness about cyber crime, and to better protect businesses against it.

The bureau benefits from the program too, he said, by drawing upon the knowledge of high-tech companies to help solve cases.

”Neither the bureau, nor any other agency, has the ability to completely address the problem in a vacuum,” he said. ”We have to partner with the private sector where the expertise resides to help us with these crimes. You have to outsource the expertise to mitigate the threat.”

A threat, said a manager of a prominent Bend technology company, became real just last week when a hacker defaced the Web site of his company’s Internet e-mail server. He requested neither his name, nor the name of his company, be printed for business competition reasons.

”We were going to put some security patches in later that week,” he said. ”We were five days unlucky.”

The hacking incident was a good test for his engineers, who were able to repair the site within three hours, he said. While the incident wasn’t serious, it will prompt some security changes within his company.

Illegal intrusions into systems can greatly damage businesses, Heuston said, since the discovery of sensitive information such as customer lists, marketing strategies and production schedules can give one business an unfair competitive advantage over another.

David Gibson, a Nokia system engineer, also spoke during the free seminar about security in the Internet marketplace and the scope of damage which hacking can cause.

Lethal viruses such as Melissa, for example, plagued 300 companies and hit more than 100,000 e-mail users within hours of being planted, he said.

In the early 1980s, Ian Murphy, also known as ”Captain Zap,” changed AT&T’s internal clocks that metered billing rates for customers, Gibson said. In 1993, the Masters of Deception, or the MOD Squad, a group of sophisticated hackers, broke into the National Security Agency, AT&T and other businesses and agencies.

Vladimir Levin, another hacker, robbed a bank by breaking into its computer system and transferring $10 million to his own bank account.

The increasing number of cyber crimes is shaking consumer confidence, Gibson said. One in three consumers will not conduct online business because of security threats.

”This has a direct impact on any of us who do online business,” he said.

For more information about the InfraGard program, contact the Portland FBI field office, or inquire via e-mail at nipc@fbi.gov.