Stories by: Paul Roberts

A new round of so-called "pharming" attacks is targeting the .com Internet domain, redirecting some Internet users who are looking for .com Web sites to Web pages controlled by the unknown attackers.

A company that offered US$25,000 for the first virus that automatically spreads among Apple Computer computers running the OS X operating system cancelled the virus writing contest and retracted the offer of cash, citing concerns about legal liability.

The Mozilla Foundation issued a patch Wednesday for a previously undisclosed hole in its popular Firefox Web browser and is encouraging Firefox users to download the software update as soon as possible.

A Louisiana man was sentenced to six months in prison for sending a malicious program using e-mail that caused Microsoft WebTV customers to call the 911 emergency service without their knowledge, according to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.

Hackers have compromised databases belonging to LexisNexis and stolen information on at least 32,000 people, according to a statement Wednesday from LexisNexis' parent company, Reed Elsevier.

Hackers penetrated the crystalline ranks of Hollywood celebrity Saturday, posting the mobile phone address book of hotel heiress and celebrity Paris Hilton on a Web page and passing the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of some of Tinsel Town's hottest stars into the public realm.

Security experts are warning that a security flaw has been found in a powerful data encryption algorithm, dubbed SHA-1, by a team of scientists from Shandong University in China. The three scientists are circulating a paper within the cryptographic research community that describes successful tests of a technique that could greatly reduce the speed with which SHA-1 could be compromised.

Open source database software maker MySQL AB warned its users to tighten security Thursday, after news broke about a new Internet worm that targets the popular relational database, according to a company executive. The company is looking at making bigger changes to harden its product against future attacks, the executive said.

A new worm-like threat is spreading on the Internet and targeting computers running the MySQL open source database software. Thousands of Microsoft Windows machines running MySQL have been infected, according to one security expert.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is making changes to streamline its response to online threats across the various branches of the military, and deal with a steady stream of new online woes, from hacking attempts to child pornography and threats posed by powerful portable storage devices such as iPods, according to senior DOD officials.

Internet luminaries gathered in Boston on Wednesday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), honor its founder, Director and Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, and look forward to another decade of innovation.