The future of our civilisation—which invented the Internet—depends on our ability to understand and master this fantastic tool. Risks such as generalised denial of service or loss of confidentiality could lead to the ruin of our economies and the disruption of our logistic and emergency services. What lessons can we draw from the Société Générale affair, in particular what improvements can be made to our information systems? Measures to reduce internal threats might include identification instead of authentication, ‘black-box’ tracing of communications and amalgamated clearance systems. The time for corrective measures has come: pirates, after all, need only half a second to attack us.