security systems

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it had charged 11 people in connection with the hacking of nine major U.S. retailers and the theft and sale of more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers.

It is believed to be the largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice. The charges include conspiracy, computer intrusion, fraud and identity theft.

Spam, one of the most annoying features of the Internet age, is celebrating a milestone.

In the spring of 1978, someone sent a note advertising a new computer system to the addresses of about 600 people on Arpanet, the government-designed precursor to the Web.

The unsolicited message sparked an immediate outcry. "This was a clear and flagrant abuse of the directory!" one user on the electronic list wrote.

This was the first of billions of spam e-mails sent over the next 30 years at a rate that has grown astronomically.

Attackers could gain control of water treatment plants, natural gas pipelines and other critical utilities because of a vulnerability in the software that runs some of those facilities, security researchers reported Wednesday.

Experts with Boston-based Core Security Technologies, who discovered the deficiency and described it exclusively to The Associated Press before they issued a security advisory, said there's no evidence anyone else found or exploited the flaw.