Cyberwarfare

(Newser) - Digital photo frames of the kids on shelves across America are cute and trendy—but they can hide computer heartbreak, warns the San Francisco Chronicle . Destructive bugs can lurk in the software and wipe out entire files as photos are being downloaded. "It was the nastiest virus I've ever encountered," said one man of a Christmas present that attacked his computer. More »

(Newser) - A federal grand jury has indicted a Michigan man and 10 others for spamming and stock fraud, Reuters reports. Alan Ralsky and his associates face 41 counts related to using spam to promote little-traded Chinese stocks, artificially driving up prices, and then making a killing by selling the stock. Ralsky is one of the US’s most prolific spammers, prosecutors said. More »

(Newser) - The coordinated cyberattack into the nonclassified portion of a US nuclear laboratory may have originated in China, says a Homeland Security memo obtained by the New York Times . The memo includes a list of offending internet addresses associated with locations in China, but points out that hackers commonly bounce their signal off of compromised computers to obscure their trail. More »

(Newser) - Internet phishers are using shorter Web addresses to make their sites seem more legitimate, says IBM's online-security division. The group observed fraudulent URLs dropping from 30-37 characters to an average of 17, reports CNET. "The fact that they felt the need to make this move suggests that they were seeing diminishing returns," said an IBM specialist.  More »

(Newser) - UK spy agency MI5 has sent an unprecedented letter to 300 British business leaders, warning them that vital sectors of the country's economy are under attack from Chinese state-sponsored electronic espionage. The Chinese "use every means at their disposal" to dig up information about British companies, a letter recipient told the Times of London. More »

(Newser) - Software security firms believe they uncovered a massive hacker effort earlier this week to "booby-trap" web searches, one which could have rendered Windows and Internet Explorer users vulnerable to fraud. Seemingly innocuous and random search terms, like "Christmas gifts" and "infinity," brought results that included links thousands of malicious China-registered websites, built to fool search engine page rank algorithms. More »

(Newser) - A day after Beijing denied that Chinese hackers had infiltrated the Pentagon's computer network, the Guardian leads with a story that "cyberwarriors" have targeted British defense and diplomatic ministries. The hackers, believed to be working for the People's Liberation Army, have also directed attacks at American and German government and military offices. More »

(Newser) - The Chinese military hacked the Pentagon's computer system in June, bringing part of it down for over a week, the Financial Times reports, but Beijing calls the accusation "groundless." The apparently successful hack raises serious worries about the safety of the network because it shows China has "the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system," said an ex-US official. More »

(Newser) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off her Chinese summit today amid highly charged reports in der Spiegel that the Chinese have been spying on the German government by hacking into computers in several German ministries. Scores of official computers are said to have been infected with spyware concealed in PowerPoint and Microsoft Word programs. More »

(Newser) - Hackers across Russia are executing crippling attacks against enemy websites—and they work for hire, Der Spiegel reports. For only a few hundred dollars, clients can retain Russian hackers to disrupt business transactions by launching barrages of pernicious data into their enemies' systems. But a disturbing trend is evident in recent cyberassaults on websites hostile to the Putin government. More »

(Newser) - In the wake of what some are calling the first digital act of war—when hackers using as many as a million computers attacked Estonia's  web-based infrastructure—cyber security experts from all over Europe and the US are huddling to study how to prevent future disasters, reports the New York Times . More »

(Newser) - Estonia is under cyberattack after removing a Soviet war memorial from its capital, reports the Guardian .  A barrage of mysterious spam assaults crippling government ministries, banks, corporations, political parties and news organizations has prompted NATO to deploy counter-cyberterrorism experts to the Baltic state, as officials cast a suspicious eye at Russia. More »