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Is chasing cybercrooks worth it?

(CNN) -- This week's arrests of three men in connection with one of the world's largest computer-virus networks may seem like great news -- perhaps even a sign authorities are starting to win the war against cyberthieves.

But the real situation is more complicated. Internet crime is up, but arrests of "mastermind" hackers are rare. And the whole get-the-bad-guys effort, while it makes for good drama, is a futile way to secure the Internet, some computer security experts say.

"The virus writers and the Trojan [horse] writers, they're still out there," said Tom Karygiannis, a computer scientist and senior researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "So I don't think they've deterred anyone by prosecuting these people."

A Trojan horse is a seemingly innocuous piece of software that, once installed, gives malicious users access to a computer system.

It would be smarter, Karygiannis said, to develop new anti-virus technologies and to teach people how to protect themselves from Internet crime. More...

03-05-2010 10:58

Spanish police arrest masterminds of 'massive' botnet

Spanish police have revealed that they have arrested three men responsible for one of the world's biggest networks of virus-infected computers.

All are Spanish citizens with no criminal records and limited hacking skills.

It is estimated that the so-called Mariposa botnet was made up of nearly 13 million computers in 190 countries. It included PCs inside more than half of Fortune 1000 companies and more than 40 major banks, investigators said. More...

03-03-2010 11:18

Cyber attacks against Australia 'will continue'

An activist group that temporarily blocked access to key Australian government websites plans to continue its cyber attacks, the BBC has learned.

The group, known as Anonymous, was protesting against the Australian government's proposals to apply filters to the internet in the country.

A man claiming to be a representative of the group said that around 500 people were involved in the attack.

The method they are using is known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).

DDoS is illegal in many countries including the United Kingdom. There is no indication that the attack was carried out from within Britain. DDoS attacks typically call on machines in many different nations, making them hard to trace.

The sites were intermittently blocked on 10 and 11 February. The action has been condemned by various bodies including the Systems Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) and Electronic Frontiers Australia. More...

02-13-2010 10:12

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