Arbor Networks

The Internet is a little less jammed with spam after a cybercrime group blew the whistle on one of the biggest offenders. HostExploit, an alliance of volunteers who work at Google, McAfee and Arbor Networks, has been tracking and documenting cybercrime activity and its latest effort slashed worldwide spam by 50 percent and junk e-mail by 75 percent.

Attackers bent on shutting down large Web sites -- even the operators that run the backbone of the Internet -- are arming themselves with what are effectively vast digital fire hoses capable of overwhelming the world's largest networks, according to a new report on online security.

In these attacks, computer networks are hijacked to form so-called botnets that spray random packets of data in huge streams over the Internet. The deluge of data is meant to bring down Web sites and entire corporate networks.

Attacks on operating systems may be decreasing since last year, but attacks on applications, incidents of malware, and unwanted software are rising and account for 90 percent of vulnerabilities, according to the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, released Saturday.

E-mail users worldwide are being buried in a blizzard of bounced messages caused by spammers.

Dubbed "backscatter spam," this latest fad is clogging e-mail accounts and slowing victims' inboxes to a crawl. Up to 3% of all e-mail today is backscatter, says Dmitry Samosseiko, manager of SophosLabs Canada. "It is a major problem, and it is getting worse," he says.

Dmitry Guzner will plead guilty to hacking attacks that brought down the Church of Scientology's Web site.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal charges against the 18-year-old New Jersey man, who is part of an underground hacking group called Anonymous. Guzner was charged Friday, and has agreed to plead guilty sometime in the next few weeks. He could spend up -to 10 years in prison on computer-hacking charges.

While Internet attacks continue in Georgia, security experts say the U.S. is not prepared for similar attacks that could steal confidential data and wreak havoc on U.S. computer systems.

National intelligence officials earlier this year told a Senate committee that unlike the U.S. military, the federal government and private sector are not prepared for cyber attacks and pointed to China and Russia as threats to consider. It wasn't the first time government officials cited China as a threat.

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites with the message: "win+love+in+Rusia."