Computer Crime

Is it a "Warmist Conspiracy," or a case of an e-mail being "taken completely out of context"? Regardless, the latest dust-up over the science of climate change appears unlikely to affect the dynamics of either a pending debate in the Senate or international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month. Conservative bloggers have seized on a series of e-mails between leading climate scientists, which were obtained by computer hackers and posted online last week, as evidence of a scientific conspiracy to push claims about human-caused global warming.

A computer hacker accused of masterminding one of the largest cases of identity theft in U.S. history agreed to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison for his crimes. Albert Gonzalez of Miami was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in federal court. Court documents indicate that Gonzalez, 28, agreed to plead guilty to 19 counts. Gonzalez is accused of swiping the credit and debit card numbers of more than 170 million accounts; officials said he was the ringleader of a group that targeted companies such as T.J. Maxx, Barnes and Noble and OfficeMax.

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.

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.

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.

A staple of the spammer's arsenal -- those come-ons for job offers -- is getting a makeover because of the recession as online identity thieves concoct clever new ways to sneak into people's computers. One tactic the bad guys are trying is a twist on an old standby: e-mails purporting to come from legitimate companies that say they're still hiring. The messages are loaded with links to the company's official website to throw off suspicious recipients but are packed with a dangerous surprise -- a computer virus -- hidden in an attachment that is supposed to be a job application.

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.

Senior military leaders took the exceptional step of briefing President Bush this week on a severe and widespread electronic attack on Defense Department computers that may have originated in Russia -- an incursion that posed unusual concern among commanders and raised potential implications for national security. Defense officials would not describe the extent of damage inflicted on military networks. But they said that the attack struck hard at networks within U.S.