Stories about: FBI

Think your security staffers are trustworthy? Competent? Knowledgeable? Ask a security professional for horror stories and you might think again.

The losses caused by a cybercrime ring broken up on Tuesday by Romania could reach into the millions of euros, an official with the General Inspectorate of the Romanian National Police said on Thursday.

It has been a number of years since the fantasy that hackers will be offered a job by those who they hacked was even a potential reality, but there are reports that this might still be the case in New Zealand.

Malicious ATM intrusions, such as the late-winter breach that resulted in the compromise of Citibank debit card data, are not at all surprising given the vulnerable state of many of the servers and other components involved in processing such transactions, according to some industry representatives.

Theft of laptops and other mobile devices is spiraling, and the consequences -- financial and other -- are getting increasingly dire.

Security assessment and deep testing don't require a big budget. Some of most effective security tools are free, and are commonly used by professional consultants, private industry and government security practitioners. Here are a few to start with.

Whether you hire outside consultants or do the testing yourself, here are some tips for making sure your time and money are well spent.

It takes a lot to shock Chris Goggans; he's been a pen (penetration) tester since 1991, getting paid to break into a wide variety of networks. But he says nothing was as egregious as security lapses in both infrastructure design and patch management at a civilian government agency -- holes that let him hack his way through to a major FBI crime database within a mere six hours.

Nearly seven years after 9/11, information-sharing problems that hobble law enforcement are just beginning to be solved.

A security researcher has developed malicious rootkit software for Cisco Systems' routers, a development that has placed increasing scrutiny on the routers that carry the majority of the Internet's traffic.

Ah, youth. Ready to take on the world, today's generation of dynamic, tech-immersed youngsters have grown up alongside the Internet. Firsthand, and sometimes single-handedly, they have advanced some of today's hottest technology trends, from peer-to-peer networking, to massively multiplayer online games, to social networks and instant messaging. And along the way, a small, sociopathic number of them have behaved very, very badly.