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It seems some poor soul has decided to do a DOS (Denial of service) attack on my site. Being resolved as I am writing this, please be patient and lets hope this saddo gets bored.

CHARLOTTE COUNTY — Managing your money on-line can be a risky proposition. One Southwest Florida family found out the hard way after losing more than $50,000 to computer hackers. A simple login in to a familiar web site revealed a nightmare. "We looked at the account and instead of having $119,000, there was only $56,000. At that point I said what's going on?" said Jeanette Miller of Port Charlotte.

Details of a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program have been put up for sale on eBay, with the seller offering a starting price of 1 US cent. At the time of writing, the bidding had reached $US60 ($A79). Zero day means information that is not publicly available and is used to describe security vulnerabilities exploits which are unknown to security professionals. The seller said the vulnerability had been discovered on December 6 and the details had been sent to Microsoft. "All the details were submitted to Microsoft, and the reply was received indicating that they may start working...

In late January, I uncovered a password-protected Arabic-language website, Barsomyat.com, that was frequented by Middle Eastern Muslims, predominantly Egyptians. The purpose of Barsomyat.com was to systematically track Christians who were active in religious debates against Muslims on the internet chat service PalTalk. Barsomyat featured pictures of these Christians (some of which were obviously obtained by hacking into the Christians' computers) along with death threats and attempts to track down the subjects' physical addresses. Even Barsomyat.com's banner showed the website's intentions toward Christians, as it pictured a sheep--obviously intended to represent Christianity--getting its throat slit.

China's economy continues its incredible growth, but the IT infrastructure at all the new offices, research parks and other projects isn't keeping pace and is increasingly imperiled by hackers and other Internet predators, experts tell UPI's The Web. The IT problems -- hackers, viruses, worms, malware -- are so severe in China that entire enterprises are at risk, and doing e-business with companies with such shoddy Internet security could pose a threat to U.S. companies. By Gene Koprowski

Successful assaults by viruses and other malware on the Mac operating system are rare as it has better security and attackers are less keen, says Stephen Wildstrom of BusinessWeek. "There is endless debate among security experts about whether the paucity of successful assaults on Apple's OS X is attributable to better security or attackers' lack of interest in an operating system whose share of the market is in single digits. I think it's some of both." Wildstrom says one reason Mac OS X offers inherently better security is that it was designed with relatively little concern for compatibility with earlier...

FAA defends 'very secure systems' WASHINGTON - High-tech networks that link key parts of the U.S. air traffic control system lack important controls and are potentially vulnerable to hackers and others familiar with how those computer programs work, congressional investigators concluded Monday. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in an update to a 2000 report that the Federal Aviation Administration has made progress in protecting information technology systems and noted the agency's contention that its interconnected networks are secure. Greg Martin, an FAA spokesman, said separately the investigation was too narrowly focused and the agency has adequate controls in place...

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) - Three teenagers face felony charges for allegedly hacking into their school computer system to "fix" grades - not for themselves but for friends. The 16-year-olds are enrolled in advanced computer classes at Bay High School, and sheriff's investigator Paul Vecker said they didn't need to change their own grades. "These are three young men who are quite intelligent," he said. Vecker said they mostly changed friends' grades by small increments to avoid notice. However, they allegedly made a big change for one junior, who reportedly would've failed if her grade hadn't been changed from an...

Carpenter had never seen hackers work so quickly, with such a sense of purpose. They would commandeer a hidden section of a hard drive, zip up as many files as possible and immediately transmit the data to way stations in South Korea, Hong Kong or Taiwan before sending them to mainland China. They always made a silent escape, wiping their electronic fingerprints clean and leaving behind an almost undetectable beacon allowing them to re-enter the machine at will. An entire attack took 10 to 30 minutes. "Most hackers, if they actually get into a government network, get excited and make...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI and the Pentagon are investigating whether Chinese spies have been hacking into U.S. government computer systems, U.S. officials said Thursday. Officials are trying to determine whether the continuing hacking efforts are sponsored by Beijing or merely involve hackers using Chinese Web sites to mask their origins, they said.

A Web forum for Muslim extremists is calling on its members to organize an Islamist hackers' army to carry out Internet attacks against the U.S. government. The site has posted tips, software and links to other resources to help would-be cyber-warriors. The Jamestown Foundation, a District-based nonprofit with a history of extensive ties to the CIA, said that it has monitored postings on a new section of an extremist bulletin board called al-Farooq. According to Jeffrey Poole, a researcher for the foundation, the forum "represents a how-to manual for the disruption and/or destruction of enemy electronic resources, including e-mail, Web...

Web sites in China are being used heavily to target computer networks in the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies, successfully breaching hundreds of unclassified networks, according to several U.S. officials.Classified systems have not been compromised, the officials added. U.S. authorities remain concerned because, as one official said, even seemingly innocuous information, when pulled together from various sources, can yield useful intelligence to an adversary."The scope of this thing is surprisingly big," said one of four government officials who spoke separately about the incidents, which stretch back as far as two or three years and have been code-named Titan Rain...

In the early days of computer attacks, when bright teens could bring down corporate systems, the point was often to trumpet a hacker's success. No longer. In today's murky world of digital viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, the idea is to stay quiet and use hijacked computers to flood the Internet with spam, spread destructive viruses, or disgorge e-mail to choke corporate systems. Not only can networks of these compromised computers be leased or sold, experts say, they are becoming more valuable as the number of vulnerable computers slowly shrinks. That's a major reason that turf wars are emerging among...

Apparently a group of alleged Middle Eastern hackers (whom I will not name) are hacking PHP-Nuke web sites through some sort of vulnerability that I have yet to hear of. A Canadian forum, canadaka.net has been taken down along with some other websites. If you're using this software you may wish to take preventive action. Now is a good time to do that, by the way!

/begin my translation 40,000 Chinese Hackers  to Attack Japan via S. Korean Servers...on Aug. 15  Chinese hackers reportedly plan a massive hacking attack against various Japanese Internet sites on Aug. 15,  using S. Korean servers as 'intermediaries' for their offensive. S. Korean servers, which Chinese hackers will use to elude the tracking of their own IP addresses, include not only servers in S. Korean universities, but also in some government institutions, which would surely raise a major concern. Wen-hui-bao in Hong Kong reported on July 2, "Zhong-guo Hong-ke-lian-meng(Zhong-hong-meng,) one of the five largest hacking organization in the world, plans to launch...

LAS VEGAS -- Attention hackers: Uncle Sam wants you. As scam artists, organized-crime rings and other miscreants find a home on the Internet, top federal officials are trolling hacker conferences to scout talent and talk up the glories of a career on the front lines of the information wars. "If you want to work on cutting-edge problems, if you want to be part of the truly great issues of our time ... we invite you to work with us," Assistant Secretary of Defense Linton Wells told hackers at a recent conference in Las Vegas. Wells and other "feds" didn't exactly...

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Attention hackers: Uncle Sam wants you. As scam artists, organized-crime rings and other miscreants find a home on the Internet, top federal officials are trolling hacker conferences to scout talent and talk up the glories of a career on the front lines of the information wars. "If you want to work on cutting-edge problems, if you want to be part of the truly great issues of our time ... we invite you to work with us," Assistant Secretary of Defense Linton Wells told hackers at a recent conference in Las Vegas. Wells and other "feds" didn't...

...''The kids basically stumbled through an open rabbit hole and found Wonderland,'' Polly, a library technology administrator, said of the Kutztown 13. The trouble began last fall after the district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The computers were loaded with a filtering program that limited Internet access. They also had software that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens. But those barriers proved easily surmountable: The administrative password that allowed students to reconfigure computers and obtain unrestricted Internet access was easy to obtain....

KUTZTOWN, Pa. -- They're being called the Kutztown 13 -- a group of high schoolers charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden Internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators. John Shrawder, 15, is one of 13 Kutztown High School students charged with felonies for bypassing security barriers on their district's network with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden programs and spying on their elders. The students, their families and outraged supporters say authorities are overreacting, punishing the kids not for any heinous behavior -- no malicious acts are alleged -- but rather because they...

The website of a Catholic civil rights group was hacked over the weekend, apparently by Islamic extremists. William Donohue, president of the New York City-based Catholic League, said the breach began yesterday, one day after his comments about the controversial new Hollywood film on the Crusades, "The Kingdom of Heaven," were published in the New York Post. The unknown hackers replaced the home page with one of their own, featuring a photo of a Palestinian holding a rock in each hand, facing down Israeli soldiers. It included epithets against President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called for freedom...