Stories about: Georgia Institute of Technology

A group of US Marines hunker down beside a building, enemy fire coming at them from somewhere up ahead. One soldier reaches into his pack and pulls out a few robots that look like large bugs. The bots fly down the street, sending back images that show where the enemy troops are hiding, how many there are and what weapons they're using.

Researchers at Google and the Georgia Institute of Technology are studying a virtually undetectable form of attack that quietly controls where victims go on the Internet.

In their current form, botnets are bad enough, but they are quickly evolving into a much tougher species to kill, according to security researchers.

Organization after organization has disclosed that critical data banks have been compromised by hackers, couriers or consultants. The causes range from lost backup tapes to lost laptops to network hacks. What most of these cases have in common is the lack of strong technical measures to protect data that is by its nature highly sensitive.