What will however be the Achilles heel of a cyber-weapons control treaty is non-compliance since there is little prospect of integrating a reliable verifi cation mechanism into such a treaty regime. It is unlikely that any State would agree to external verifi cation measures which would necessarily require scanning all computers and storage devices owned and used by the State including all classifi ed systems. This is a signifi cant drawback as past experience demonstrates that the success of arms control treaties has been contingent largely on the existence of a robust compliance and verification regime. For example, although the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BWC) entered into force in 1975 and has 165 State Parties, it has repeatedly been criticised for lacking credibility on the grounds that it contains