WestNet Computer Hacking Forensics Investigators

The International Monetary Fund disclosed this weekend that it recently was the victim of a cyberattack. This comes hard on the heels of Google's revelation that a relatively sophisticated attack tried to compromise email accounts of high-profile American policy makers, and a security breach at RSA, a company that manufactures security devices used by hundreds of thousands of employees at thousands of companies to access sensitive information on corporate computer networks.

Makers and distributors of computer viruses will be subject to criminal prosecution under a bill to revise the Criminal Code and other relevant laws that is expected to pass the current Diet.

The bill passed the House of Representatives on May 31 and was sent to the House of Councillors later the same day.

Presently there is no law directly criminalizing the creation or distribution of computer viruses, making it difficult for investigative authorities to combat cybercrimes.

One in four hackers in the U.S. is an FBI informant, the UK Guardian reported today. They must be doing a pretty bad job, because cybercrime seems to be spiking like crazy, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation itself has even been targeted. Today, the new hacking collective Lulz Security released what it said was the source code for the Sony Computer Entertainment Development Network (its fifth hack of Sony).

Paraben Corporation (http://www.paraben.com/), a leader in the digital forensics industry, announced the release of the Phone Recovery Stick. This innovative new product brings advanced computer forensic powers to every day consumers. Until now, people would need to pay forensic examiners to try to extract deleted data from Androids. The Phone Recovery Stick gives this power to anyone who can plug the USB device into a computer. Once plugged in, users simply plug their Android phone in and run the program.

Culver City-based Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., the television and movie studio for the Japanese electronics giant, confirmed late Friday that it been hacked and was working with the FBI to identify the attacker.

In a statement, the studio's chairman Michael Lynton and co-chairman Amy Pascal said that a "cyber-crime wave that has affected Sony companies and a number of government agencies, businesses and individuals in recent months has hit Sony Pictures as well."

The FBI announced Sunday it shut down an Atlanta-based website that tracks cyber-crime after the site was compromised by a mysterious, yet increasingly audacious group of hackers.

InfraGard Atlanta, a nonprofit partnership between local business, government and academic security experts and the FBI, was hacked late last week by Lulz Security. LulzSec, as it’s known on-line in cyber security channels, hijacked the InfraGard site and published the email addresses, usernames and passwords of its 180 members.

BENTON, Mo. -- Pedophilia was around long before computers were invented.
But "the Internet is what brought it to the forefront," said Det. Scott Phelps, investigations coordinator for the Southeast Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force.

Before there were online chat rooms, predators had to physically approach children, often in public places, to lure them away from safety. Before digital images could be sent through email or downloaded from websites, child pornography collectors exchanged paper photographs and film reels.