Stories by: Andrew Brandt

For those of us who make our living behind a keyboard in IT, it's hard to imagine a more time-tested vulnerability than the end-user. Armed with network access, these IT viruses wreak havoc nearly everywhere you look -- havoc borne of tech idiocy.

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.

Con job, pretexting, social engineering -- the art and science of manipulating human beings for nefarious ends -- goes back as far as the origin of the species. The techniques have been practiced and perfected by a rogue's gallery of flimflam artists, from legendary carnival operator P. T. Barnum to infamous FBI mole Robert Hanssen.

News that a nine-year-old encryption method -- one that underlies the protection of virtually all secure online communications -- appears to have been cracked by a team of three Chinese researchers has spurred encryption experts around the world to issue a call to action.

Viruses that target handhelds can be even more dangerous than their cousins that attack PCs, spawning self-replicating programs that hide easily, a security researcher told an audience of security professionals at the Black Hat Briefings conference in Las Vegas last week.

A study unveiled at the Black Hat Briefings conference in Las Vegas last week paints a grim picture of network security problems.