Cyber wars

  Security researcher: I found secret reprogramming backdoors in Chinese microprocessors

  Flame: Massive cyber-attack discovered, researchers say

Cyber terrorism

Is just in its infancy:

WASHINGTON – The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange.

An early analysis of the malicious software used in the attack found its targets also included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained attacks.

The Associated Press obtained the target list from security experts analyzing the attack. It was not immediately clear who might be responsible or what their motives were.

The attack was remarkably successful. Some of the affected government Web sites — such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service — were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday.

But it's growing up fast.

Just shut up and go eat your food and play with your toys

China has this covered:

BEIJING — China denied charges Tuesday that its military had hacked into a Pentagon computer network, the second time in a week that the nation has fended off accusations of cyber-attacks from within its borders.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the latest charges "reflect a Cold War mentality."

Britain's Financial Times reported in its U.S. edition Tuesday that Chinese hackers had broken into a Pentagon computer network in June, leading to a shutdown of a system that serves the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The newspaper quoted an unnamed senior U.S. official as saying that the source of the attack had been traced to the People's Liberation Army. Other unnamed officials said they also were fairly certain that the attacks came from within China's military.

A POSSIBLE criminal case?

C'mon you guys. If he had been a Democrat, he'd have been in leg irons within 5 minutes!

Florida law enforcement officials are building a possible criminal case against disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla., based on sexually explicit instant messages that were sent from Pensacola, Fla., to an underage high school student, thereby falling under the state's tough law on Internet sexual predators, ABC News has learned. "It's a broad statute, and it encompasses a lot of activity," said Maureen Horkan, the director of the Child Predator CyberCrime Unit in the Florida Attorney General's office.

And this note in the article bodes ill:

He was seen last week bicycling along South Ocean Boulevard wearing a helmet and bike racing outfit.

Was he carrying a laptop?

We're number one!

Um... then again...

According to the report, Symantec identified more than 6 million "bot-infected" computers globally during the second half of 2006 - this represents a 26 percent increase from the previous period.

A more startling finding was that theft or loss of computer or data storage paraphernalia like USB memory keys, accounted for 54 percent of all identity-theft related breaches.

[snip]

Symantec identified the U.S. as having the highest level of malicious activity with 31 percent, while China took a distant second with 10 percent and Germany was close in third place with 7 percent.

Arthur Wong, senior vice president, Symantec Security Response and Managed Services said in a statement, "As cyber criminals become increasingly malicious, they continue to evolve their attack methods to become more complex and sophisticated in order to prevent detection."