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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Prosecutors looking to throw the book at accused computer hackers have come across a legal defense expected to become even more widespread in an era of hijacked PCs and laptops that threatens to blur the lines of personal responsibility: the computer did it. In one case that was being watched as a bellwether by computer security experts, Aaron Caffrey, 19, was acquitted earlier this month in the United Kingdom on charges of hacking into the computer system of the Houston Pilots, an independent contractor for the Port of Houston, in September 2001. Caffrey had been charged...

BUCHAREST, Romania - It was nearly 70 degrees below zero outside, but the e-mail on a computer at the South Pole Research Center sent a different kind of chill through the scientists inside. "I've hacked into the server. Pay me off or I'll sell the station's data to another country and tell the world how vulnerable you are," the message warned. Proving it was no hoax, the message included scientific data showing the extortionist had roamed freely around the server, which controlled the 50 researchers' life-support systems. The FBI (news - web sites) traced the e-mail to an Internet cafe...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Three Web sites that provide spam blocking lists have shut down as a result of crippling Internet attacks in what experts on Thursday said is an escalation in the war between spammers and opponents of unsolicited e-mails. Anti-spam experts said that they think spammers are behind the attacks, although they have no way of proving it. The technological war comes as Congress considers a federal anti-spam law and California adopts what is widely considered to be the toughest law in the country. The California law, signed on Tuesday, allows people to sue spammers for $1,000 per...

Hacker Adrian Lamo, 22, surrendered to federal authorities in California on Tuesday to face charges stemming from his alleged breach of the New York Times network in February 2002. Patty Pontello, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, confirmed that Lamo surrendered to the U.S. Marshall's Service at federal court in Sacramento. Lamo was booked and is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows Tuesday afternoon, Pontello said. Pontello expects Lamo will be sent to New York to face the charges against him. Lamo became famous following his widely publicized hacks into corporations such as Yahoo, WorldCom, ExciteAtHome,...

Cryptology experts at the Technion in Haifa have managed to crack the code used by 850 million cellular phones, finding faults that could be used by thieves to steal calls and even to impersonate phone owners in the middle of an ongoing call. If the cellular phone companies in 197 countries want to correct the code errors that exposes them to trickery and abuse, they will have to call in each customer to make a change in the cellphone's programming. The researchers -- Prof. Eli Biham of the Technion's computer sciences faculty, doctoral student Elad Barkan and master's degree graduate...

FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigators have tracked the source of the fast-moving Sobig virus and are working with Internet service providers to try to stop the next phase in the virus's attack, which was expected to begin at 3 p.m. Eastern Time Friday afternoon. The FBI has served a grand jury subpoena on Easynews.com, a Phoenix-based Internet service provider that provides access to "Usenet," a worldwide online bulletin board system. According to a source with knowledge of the investigation's focus, the person or persons who released the latest version of Sobig used an Easynews.com account to release the...

Evidence gathered by Microsoft, the FBI, and the Secret Service on the worldwide attacks made against the computers running the Windows operating system fits the profile of 'terrorist activity.'Industry sources citing Mirosoft officials told World Tribune.com that the recent attacks from the 'Blaster' worm and its variants, coupled with an email virus called 'SoBig-F' show signs of a coordinated attack by an entity wanting to disrupt world commerce.Microsoft is cooperating with both the FBI and the Secret Service and will report their findings in the next few days.While at present no terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility for these attacks in...

<p>Although government and energy-industry officials have continued to state that Thursday's massive power blackout was not an act of terrorism, they are unable to rule out the possibility that a computer hacker plunged 50 million people into darkness, a source told Fox News Monday.</p>

<p>LOS ANGELES - The Department of Homeland Security has issued an unprecedented second warning to Internet users about a security flaw in Microsoft Corp. software that could leave about 75 percent of the country's computers vulnerable to hacker attacks.</p> <p>The latest warning comes two weeks after Microsoft issued a bulletin notifying computer users it had discovered a critical flaw in its most common Windows operating systems, including its newest versions, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.</p>

It's time for would be RIAA attackers to run for the hills. The pigopolists have installed TST-Secure-OS on their Web servers. This Web server brand is not well know to hacker neophytes. Those in-the-know, however, tremble in fear when TST's rock-solid software rears its ugly head. The code was developed as part of a ten-year, government funded engineering effort to block hackers from unpopular Web sites. Well, not really. More likely, the TST-Secure-OS is a disguised version of Microsoft IIS 6.0. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has remodeled its "Hide the Web site" game into a "Hide the...

A Russian computer hacker was sentenced to four years in federal prison for running a fraud and extortion ring that victimized a New Jersey financial services company, among others. Aleksey V. Ivanov was arrested with an accomplice after being lured to the United States by the FBI in 2000. An indictment accused them of hacking into dozens of U.S. banks and e-commerce sites, and then demanding money for not publicizing the break-ins. Ivanov, 23, of Chelyabinsk, Russia, was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Hartford, Conn., following a joint investigation by federal prosecutors in Hartford, Newark,...

WASHINGTON -- It's all a contest among Internet hackers, and the results could be devastating. Both government and private experts have warned that hackers had planned to attack thousands of Web sites Sunday during the loosely-coordinated contest. They've also urged Web administrators to be alert. Organizers had established a Web site for the event, which was shut down last Wednesday evening. Before it was removed, the site listed the rules for hackers who might be taking part. FBI spokesman Bill Murray says "The FBI is taking this very seriously...hacking is a crime and those who participate in this activity will...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- A Tennessee middle school allowed security cameras to film children undressing in locker rooms and then stored the images on a computer accessible through the Internet, according to a lawsuit filed by a group of angry parents.</p>

Tallahassee - The War began silently this morning at around 2:00 AM EST. Complaints to Internet Service providers are up, and it's all because of a handful of people who have nothing better to do than attempt to destroy our normal way of life. The Computer Dudes in Tallahassee are in a bit of a tizzy this afternoon. While preparing for the launch of their new Web Communications Tool, they were caught off guard early this morning by what seems to be an cyber attack. "This is a serious attack, and these hackers are just practicing today. It's going to...

By TED BRIDIS AP TECHNOLOGY WRITER WASHINGTON -- The government and private technology experts warned Wednesday that hackers plan to attack thousands of Web sites Sunday in a loosely coordinated "contest" that could disrupt Internet traffic. An early-warning network for the technology industry, operating with the Department of Homeland Security, notified companies that it received "credible information" about the planned attacks and already has detected surveillance probes by hackers looking for weaknesses in corporate and government networks. "We emphasize that all Web site administrators should ensure that their sites are not vulnerable," wrote Peter Allor of Internet Security Systems Inc.,...

Man accused of hacking into university The Associated Press 6/21/2003, 8:37 a.m. ET RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A 21-year-old student was arrested for allegedly hacking into a university computer system during student elections to cast hundreds of votes for a made-up candidate he named American Ninja. Shawn Nematbakhsh, a computer science major at the University of California, Riverside, was arrested Friday for investigation of drug possession and altering computer data without permission. If convicted, he could face up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He was being held Saturday on $10,000 bail. Arraignment was set for Tuesday....

COMPUTERS are rare and internet access is almost nonexistent for most people in North Korea, yet the isolated communist country is suspected of training computer hackers for cyberterrorism, US and South Korean officials say. Sitting in a glass-fronted building in Seoul, Cho Kyong-won, a young South Korean who looks more like a hip youngster with long hair than the serious computer scientist that he is, considers the prospect of Pyongyang's digital warriors and concludes there is no reason to think they would be incompetent just because their country is poor. "They could be good," says Cho, 25, an cybersecurity expert...

The Americans had tried almost everything, but they just couldn't crack an encrypted message they came across while investigating the 9/11 attacks. Finally, they approached a 17-year-old boy in Delhi about whom The New York Times had done a feature. Over the next 10 days, Ankit Fardia hunkered down in his room in Delhi and came up with the key to crack the message. The worst fears of American investigators came true — Al-Qaeda was using a sophisticated technology, called steganography, to communicate. It involved sending encrypted messages concealed in a photograph or series of photographs. “I was lucky in...

North Building Up Hacking Capability by Yoo Yong-won (kysu@chosun.com) North Korea has been strengthening its cyber-terrorism capability, and is training more than 100 persons a year to be expert hackers, Song Young-keun, the nation's defense security commander, said Friday. Song, speaking at a seminar on changes in the intelligence environment that was attended by 400 experts and military officials, said that his command had been concentrating on ensuring the protection of Korea's defense intelligence systems. He warned, though, that the risks the nation faces in this area cannot be eliminated by his agency alone. It is very unusual for high-ranking...

Watch out. Email is going to look like this: From: Microsoft Internet Public Assistance **(notice, it is Java Script, the real address is masked)** Subject: Internet Security Patch To: "Microsoft Corporation Client" < > Note that the FROM: e-mail address doesn't show microsoft.com, but some spoofed e-mail address. The attached file is patch717.exe and is 2 bytes long. It's a "bootstrap" program and will bring in really bad news for you. If Microsoft really wanted you to have a patch, they'd publicize it and direct you to their Web site. Since most people tend to use their head as a...