Information freedom for open source users.

A new study of 45 U.S. organizations found that cyber crime — including Web attacks, malicious code, and rogue insiders — costs each one of them $3.8 million per year, on average, and results in about one successful attack each week.

A talk on China’s military cyber-attack capabilities has been pulled from the Black Hat security conference schedule following pressure from Taiwanese and Chinese agencies.

The average cost to an organization of a data breach in the United States is higher than in four other countries where data-breach costs were compared, specifically Australia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, according to a Ponemon Institute report published Wednesday.

The information stolen from Google in cyber attacks late last year included a password system that gives users access to multiple services after just one login, according to a news report.

Targeted cyber attacks of the sort that hit Google and more than 30 other tech firms earlier this year are testing enterprise security models in new ways and pose a more immediate threat to sensitive data than a full-fledged cyber war.

WASHINGTON — A top FBI official warned today that many cyber-adversaries of the U.S. have the ability to access virtually any computer system, posing a risk that’s so great it could “challenge our country’s very existence.”

A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate Tuesday would compel the White House to identify international cyber crime havens and establish plans for cleaning them up.

The International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act takes on a growing problem for banks and U.S. businesses: the ability for cyber criminals to operate with impunity across international borders. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, and Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.

Seattle is the most dangerous city in the U.S. when it comes to cyber crime, Symantec said today.

The Northwest sported two of the top 10, with Portland, Ore., ranked No. 10 in the list of the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. Rounding out the first five were Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Raleigh, N.C. Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, and Austin, Texas, completed the top 10.

Is the United States in the middle of a cyber war? You’d think the answer to that question would be obvious. But apparently it depends on whom you ask.

Case in point: At this week’s RSA security conference, Scott Borg, director and chief economist from the U.S. Cyber Consequence Unit think tank, declared that we are already deep into a cyber war.

Cloud security loomed over the RSA Conference this week as a major concern of business, but worry about the threat of cyber war was also strong, with officials from the White House and FBI weighing in to encourage private participation in government efforts to defend information and communications networks.

SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses are still trying to figure out what to make of social networking. The knee-jerk impulse at some companies is to ban its use because it’s insecure and seen as unproductive, while at others it’s viewed as, in fact, the way a lot of people now get work done.

Companies should take extra steps to secure their source code from the type of targeted attacks that hit Google, Adobe, Intel and others over the past few months.

The hackers who broke into Google two months ago have gone after more than 100 companies, according to an estimate by security vendor Isec Partners.

Researchers have been closing in on the unidentified criminals responsible for the attack over the past month. In the process, they have uncovered another 68 so-called command-and-control servers, used to control the hacked machines.

Most firms have experienced some kind of cyber attack in the last year, according to research released Monday by Symantec. The 2010 State of Enterprise Security study reveals that 75 percent of organizations experienced cyber attacks and 42 percent of organizations rate security as their top issue, more than natural disasters, terrorism, and traditional crime combined.

Chinese police and judicial officials are formulating new measures that govern how hacking crimes are handled by courts, the country’s latest step to strengthen its cyber laws, state media reported.

The targeted cyber attacks apparently originating in China that hit Google and more than 30 other companies late last year are now targeting some U.S. defense contractors, according to security vendor F-Secure.

Top Chinese search engine Baidu.com has sued its U.S. domain registrar over a hack that took down the Web site, alleging negligence by the U.S. company, Baidu said Wednesday.

The malicious software used to steal information from companies such as Google contains code that links it to China, a security researcher said Tuesday

China on Tuesday denied any role in alleged cyber attacks on Indian government offices, calling China itself the biggest victim of hackers.

Juniper Networks and Symantec said Thursday that they were investigating a widespread cyber-espionage incident that has hit dozens of technology companies, including Google and Adobe.