The U.S. government is advising system administrators to monitor their systems for computer attacks planned this week, ahead of the Washington, D.C., meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The meetings have spurred protests in previous years, but this year anti-globalization activists are expected to step up their plans, possibly attempting to block traffic on the city's streets on Friday. The U.S. government's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) said Monday that those planning physical disruption might also use computer attacks to "enhance the effects of the physical attack or to complicate the response by emergency services to the attack."

Although there have been no specific cyberthreats issued against the IMF and World Bank meetings, the center warned that "several hacker groups" could be planning Internet protests.

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