Stories by Robert McMillan

After Stuxnet, a rush to find bugs in industrial systems

Kevin Finisterre isn't the type of person you expect to see in a nuclear power plant. With a beach ball-sized Afro, aviator sunglasses and a self-described "swagger," he looks more like Clarence Williams from the '70s TV show "The Mod Squad" than an electrical engineer.

Man charged with hacking Scarlett Johansson, other celebs

A 35-year-old man was arrested Wednesday on charges that he broke into the email accounts of numerous Hollywood celebrities and stole private photographs and correspondence.

111 arrested in massive ID theft bust

Prosecutors call it the biggest identity theft bust in US history. On Friday, 111 bank tellers, retail workers, waiters and alleged criminals were charged with running a credit-card-stealing organization that stole more than $US13 million in less than a year-and-a-half.

From friends and fans, Steve Jobs tributes pour in

As news of the death of Steve Jobs spread around the Internet, the tributes came pouring in Wednesday, crediting Apple's co-founder and chairman with -- more than once -- changing computing as we know it.

Firefox advises users to disable McAfee plugin

It's the last thing McAfee would want users to hear about one of its products, but the Firefox browser is advising users to disable McAfee's ScriptScan software, saying that it could cause "stability or security problems."

On the front line against the next Stuxnet

Something has gone terribly wrong on the plant floor at ACME Specialty Chemical International Inc.

Striking a domain provider, Microsoft kills off a botnet

Microsoft has opened a front in its ongoing battle against Internet scammers, using the power of a U.S. court to deal a knockout blow to an emerging botnet and taking offline a provider of free Internet domains.

MySQL.com hacked to serve malware

The website for the open-source MySQL database was hacked and used to serve malware to visitors Monday.

Alleged LulzSec Sony hacker arrested

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested a Phoenix student, claiming that he is one of the LulzSec hackers responsible for a database attack on Sony Pictures computers that claimed more than 1 million victims.

Man stole data from U.S. service members via P2P

A California man who dug up sensitive information belonging to U.S. service members on peer-to-peer networks, and then used it to order iPods, cameras, and even washing machines from an online store, was sentenced to 75 months in federal prison Thursday.

Judge strikes part of Oracle's Java lawsuit against Google

A federal judge threw out a small part of Oracle's Java lawsuit against Google on Thursday but allowed the bulk of the case to proceed.

SAP pays $20M to settle criminal charges in Oracle case

SAP has agreed to pay just over $US20 million to settle a criminal case brought against its TomorrowNow subsidiary.

U.S. launches criminal probe into eBay-Craigslist dispute

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into whether eBay executives broke the law and stole trade secrets while sitting on the board of Craigslist.org.

With help from Intel, McAfee links security to the chip

Nearly seven months after Intel shelled out $US7.68 billion for antivirus vendor McAfee, the two companies are offering a glimpse of their future.

Anonymous supporters claim NBC News Twitter hack

Hackers calling themselves the Script Kiddies took control of the NBC News Twitter account on Friday afternoon and used it to send out a series of hoax Twitter messages claiming there was a repeat terrorist attack on New York's Ground Zero.