Computer Crime

The cyber attack that brought down Twitter for several hours Thursday was aimed at a single blogger in the country of Georgia, according to Facebook, which was also targeted in the attack. Cyxymu, as the blogger is known online, uses his blog and accounts on several social media networks to lash out against Russia, which has waged battles with Georgia over disputed territory. "Yesterday's attack appears to be directed at an individual who has a presence on a number of sites," Facebook said in a statement.

Marc Maiffret used to be a computer hacker. Now he gets paid to break into the systems of Southern California businesses, testing for security weaknesses. His client today is a major Los Angeles auto dealer, which sells fancy luxury cars to celebrities and corporate execs. The head of the company wants to check on the safety of his customer data. It's not an idle worry. Just days earlier, a 28-year-old Miami man was charged by federal authorities with hacking into multiple computer systems and stealing 130 million credit and debit card numbers -- the largest computer crime ever prosecuted.

Despite a broad and persistent cyber attack whose targets included the White House, the New York Stock Exchange and the Washington Post, government websites were operating normally on Wednesday, officials said. The attack began July 4 and caused little damage, but it touched off a debate among experts over whether it represented a mild nuisance or the opening salvo of a potential electronic war.

The Pentagon spent more than $100 million in the last six months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems, military leaders said Tuesday. Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said the military was only beginning to track the costs, which are triggered by daily attacks against networks at the Pentagon and military bases around the country.

It was a rough day for Gmail. First, Google Inc.'s e-mail service experienced an outage that lasted several hours in the early morning. Then, a phishing scam made its way around Google Talk, the chat protocol embedded within the Gmail Web interface. For the former, Google issued an apology and an explanation via its Gmail blog. For the latter, Google added the apparent perpetrator of the phishing attack, a website called ViddyHo.com, to its blacklist.

Most thefts of sensitive information from corporations occur when the victimized companies don't know what data they have, where they have it or who has access to it, according to a study released Wednesday by Verizon Communications Inc. In about two-thirds of the 500 data thefts investigated by Verizon's security unit over the last several years, the targets didn't know what information they were storing or where exactly they were storing it.

Cyber-crime pays. But selling counterfeit drugs apparently pays better. Some of the world's most prolific spammers used to tout products for a few pennies per million e-mails or con consumers into forking over credit card information. But these groups have found that the most profit and growth potential lies in actually shipping the fake Viagra and other products they're hawking, according to a study scheduled for release today by a top security researcher.

Treat your I.T. workers well. Listen to their concerns. Encourage their creativity. But set up good checks to make sure they can't hijack your system. That may be the lesson in the wake of the 10-day standoff here between a computer network expert and the municipality for which he worked. Terry Childs, 43, a suspended systems administrator for the city and county of San Francisco, sits in a jail cell, accused of tampering with the very computer network he was hired to maintain.

Federal authorities said Tuesday that they had cracked the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history, charging 11 people in the theft of more than 40 million credit and debit card account numbers from computer systems at such major retailers as TJ Maxx and Barnes & Noble.

A gaping hole in the foundation of the Internet can allow malicious hackers to launch new attacks on corporate systems as well as individual computer users, a leading technology security researcher said Wednesday. The problem is being fixed, but many corporate systems remain vulnerable and the extent of any damage is unknown.