Reuters - A proposed update of the U.S. online privacy rule for children would revise definitions of personal information and beef up parental consent mechanisms to reflect technological changes.

Reuters - Supermodel and TV host Heidi Klum was named on Thursday as the most dangerous celebrity in cyberspace, inviting malware and viruses to flourish on computers.

AP - A new study warns that the U.S. must develop cyber intelligence as a new and better coordinated government discipline that can predict computer-related threats and deter them.

Mashable - The "Script Kiddies" have struck again, this time hacking the Twitter account of NBC News, and falsely reporting that an airliner had crashed into Ground Zero in New York. The hacker group infiltrated NBC's Twitter account Friday evening, with the first message showing up on Twitter at 5:48 P.M.:

Appolicious - Suddenly, I’m feeling weird about how little I consider online security. After reading in a USA Today story about how identity thieves and pedophiles are slowly infiltrating social networks to gain access to identities or little kids, it dawned on me how I spend roughly 0% of my day worried about this sort of thing. Every month I pay bills online, and many of the student loan payments I make require a social security verification prior to each payment. But that worry pales in comparison to what kids are apparently up against.

Reuters - Internet domain name provider VeriSign Inc said its chief financial officer Brian Robins, who played a key role in the company's long drawn out restructuring process, has resigned.

The Atlantic Wire - It turns out that cybercrime has a lot of correlations with street crime--at least the victims do. According to statistics in a fresh report from the cyber security firm Norton victims of cybercrime are twice as likely to be victims of real world crimes like mugging, robbery and violence. Lifehacker talked to Norton internet safety advocate Marian Merritt about why and she said, "Clearly these people aren't taking enough care in their real-world interactions and it carries over in their online world." Cybercrime is broadly defined in the study and includes anything from a phishing attack to identity theft. It's worth considering that Norton's survey of nearly 20,000 people showed that two out of three people are cybercrime victims which makes us believe that that the numbers are pretty broad. It's also worth considering that Norton sells anti-cybercrime software.

Digital Trends - Symantec has released its Norton CyberCrime Report for 2011, and if you thought business was good for smartphone and mobile device makers…well, business appears to be good for cybercriminals too. According to Symantec, some 431 million adults worldwide were victims of cybercrime in the last year, with the total cost of those crimes amounting to some $114 billion. And when Symantec figures in the value of the time victims lost to that crime, the cost goes up another $274 billion to $388 billion. If those figures hold water, it potentially makes the the cost of online crime worldwide larger than the global trade in heroin, marijuana, and cocaine combined.

Digital Trends - The computer that runs your car may be the next target hit by hackers, says anti-virus software maker McAfee.

Mashable - Fran Maier is the president and executive chair of TRUSTe, the leading online privacy solutions provider. She speaks widely on issues of online privacy and trust and is active in mentoring women in technology. She serves on a number of Internet and trust-related boards, including the Online Trust Alliance. With each new school year, students have even more reason to spend academic time online. My nephews cheerily informed me that they won’t be needing paper planners this year; instead, they’ll track assignments, grades and events using their school’s new online system. My son in high school is prepping for the SATs using online tutorials, and my college-age son will begin an internship programming mobile apps.

Reuters - A study by Symantec Corp, the maker of Norton computer security software, estimates the cost of global cybercrimes at $114 billion annually.

Mashable - More than four months after hackers brought down its PlayStation Network, accessing the personal information of more than 100 million users, Sony has hired a veteran of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as its security chief. Philip Reitinger, the former deputy under secretary at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been named senior vice president and chief information security officer at Sony, the company announced Tuesday. Reitinger will oversee information security, privacy and Internet safety across the company. In addition to serving at the Department of Homeland Security, Reitinger also worked at Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Digital Trends - Computer security firm Trend Micro says fake digital certificates from compromised Dutch certification authority DigiNotar were part of a broad-scale man-in-the-middle attack targeting Iranian Internet users—and may have left political dissidents, activists, and others trying to bypass Iran’s online censorship regime vulnerable to eavesdropping.

AP - Hackers who broke into a Dutch web security firm have issued hundreds of bogus security certificates for spy agency websites including the CIA as well as for Internet giants like Google, Microsoft and Twitter, the government said Monday.

Digital Trends - 32-year-old Luis Mijangos was sentenced to six year in prison this week by a U.S. District Court judge in California after pleading guilty to one count of computer hacking and one count of wiretapping in March 2011. Mijangos, a resident of Santa Ana, California, worked as a freelance web designer and developer earning about $52,000 a year, but also spent his days using malware to gain access to people’s computers and extorting up to $3,000 a day from his victims. FBI experts in computer forensics estimated that Mijangos infected more than 100 computers used by over 230 people, 20 percent which were juveniles. 

Digital Trends - More hackers have been caught this week thanks to an international police effort to crackdown on hacktivism. Scotland Yard has apprehended two men they believe are connected to the notorious hactivist groups LulzSec and Anonymous. The two are suspected of committing offenses under the Computer Misuse Act 1990; it’s believed the men committed these offenses under the codename ‘Kayla’.

AP - British police on Thursday arrested two men as part of a trans-Atlantic investigation into attacks carried out by the hacking groups Anonymous and Lulz Security.

Reuters - A weekend contest at the world's largest hacking convention in Las Vegas showed one reason why big corporations seem to be such easy prey for cyber criminals: their workers are poorly trained in security.

Reuters - Evil hackers with state-of-the-art computers gain remote control of a power plant and blow it up, killing many people and threatening more mayhem if a huge ransom is not paid.