Hacking techniques have been looked on for long, and actually they are still mistrusted, but something is changing and companies and institutions are starting to reckon the value of the ethical applications of hacking.

Around the concept of “ethical hacking”, anyway,  there’s a lot of confusion , abuses and misinterpretations, especially concerning services provided to companies and public institutes, such as security  penetration testing services.

That’s why  British government approved a motion that will oblige organizations and individuals that provide this kind of services to be subject to an accreditation process to testify their reliability and expertise.

It may sound an overstatement but recent facts suggest that US Institutions represent for computers    what the Bermuda triangle represents for airplanes and boats: a black hole. 

The New York Times  reported last week that 20 desktop computers are missing from the US government department responsible for safeguarding technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies. 

At least 14 computers on 20 have been used for classified data processing.  

The investigation made clear that official procedures were partially respect or weren’t respected since a recent audit by the Energy Department inspector general discovered that the department  used computers not listed in internal inventories and one computer previously  listed as “destroyed”.

Experts at Sophos Labs  warned  about a widespread malicious attack which is perpetrated through an e-mail inviting users to download the beta for Internet Explorer 7.0. 

The e-mail, whose subject  is "Internet Explorer 7 Downloads", claims to come from  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it     and displays an image which invites users to download beta 2 of Internet Explorer 7.

But actually, the message is fake and it contains the file called ie7.0.exe, infected by  a virus, known as Grum-A  , that infects executable files referenced by Run keys in the Windows Registry. 

The US Treasury Department recently released a list of  suspected terrorists and drug traffickers that can be publicly checked up by private businesses that, according to companies themselves, cannot  offer certain services to people quoted in the list.

So, for example, rental and mortgage companies and car dealers added the following statement to their rental application:

“ The company X is prohibited by law from leasing to persons listed on the dept. of the treasury’s OFAC list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers”.

  This may be considered as a normal procedure in countries where Homeland Security is taken in high consideration. What is not normal, but unfortunately quite usual, is that companies sometimes deny  such services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

Are you worried that your Social Security or credit card number might be stolen? Would you like to be sure that nobody but you could use your data? A new web site apparently represents the solution you are looking for.

The homepage of StolenIDsearch.com  offers a “free, fast and secure search” to understand if US users’ personal information is safe. But there’s a problem: in order to check whether or not data were stolen, people should enter credit card or social security number into a search box, which is very similar to those of other Searching Engines.

The company  says not to worry about that and created a specific section where it is widely explained why StolenID search is so safe. The company claims: