CYBERCRIME

A contract has been awarded for research to help counter computer-based threats to national-security networks, the chief U.S. code-cracking and eavesdropping agency said, amid mounting concern over cyber vulnerabilities.

The government is launching a program nicknamed Perfect Citizen to detect cyber assaults on private U.S. companies and government agencies running critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid and nuclear power plants, the Wall Street Journal said in its online edition, citing people familiar with the program.

U.S. authorities seized nine websites on Wednesday, accusing them of movie piracy by offering free access to movies such as Toy Story 3.

A security expert has identified flaws in the design of some automated teller machines that make them vulnerable to hackers, who could make the ubiquitous cash dispensers spit out their cash holdings.

The company that oversees Web addresses ending in .org said on Wednesday it was introducing extra security measures to guard against identity theft.

Top arms groups are on high alert to counter cyber spies from stealing their own secrets at a major arms bazaar outside Paris, even as they market new ways to clients on how to repel hackers in the digital battlespace.

The U.S. Defense Department must be able to operate freely in cyberspace amid dangers of remote sabotage, an Army general tapped to streamline offensive and defensive computer operations said on Thursday.

The United States is losing enough data in cyber attacks to fill the Library of Congress many times over, and authorities have failed to stay ahead of the threat, a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday.

There is no evidence that last Thursday's mysterious U.S. stock market meltdown was caused by a cyberattack, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Sunday.

Fake security software was the No. 1 cybersecurity woe afflicting computer users in 2009, and Apple users lost some of their immunity to cybercrime as they stored more data online instead of on hard drives, according to the cybersecurity firm Symantec.

A December cyberattack on Google Inc computers hit the company's password system that millions of people worldwide use to access almost all of the company's Web services, The New York Times said, citing a person with direct knowledge of the investigation.

Internet domain company GoDaddy.com said it planned to stop registering domain names in China, joining Google Inc in protesting cyber attacks and censorship in that country.

Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine's capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world's most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses.

Lawmakers would seek to end current ad hoc international efforts, echoing industry calls for worldwide rules.

A new version of a cybersecurity bill was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday that may eliminate some opposition to the measure from the tech industry.

China warned Google, the world's largest search engine, against flouting the country's laws on Friday, as expectations grow for a resolution to a public battle over censorship and cyber-security.

The hackers behind the attacks on Google Inc and dozens of other companies operating in China stole valuable computer source code by breaking into the personal computers of employees with privileged access, a security firm said on Wednesday.

Spanish criminals who stole bank details from computers around the world did not realize the power of the illegal network they had created which could have paralyzed an entire country's computer systems, police said.

Spanish police have arrested three men accused of masterminding one of the biggest computer crimes to date -- infecting more than 13 million PCs with a virus that stole credit card numbers and other data.

Spanish police have arrested three men accused of masterminding one of the biggest computer crimes to date -- infecting more than 13 million PCs with a virus that stole credit card numbers and other data.

The Obama administration on Tuesday declassified part of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative created during the Bush administration, outlining offensive and defensive strategies for protecting information networks.