After California's secretary of state hired computer scientists to review the state's machines last spring, they found that on one vote-tallying server, the default password was set to the name of the vendor — something laughably easy for a hacker to guess.
On Wednesday, Michael Gove, the education secretary, announced that the teaching of computer science was to be dramatically overhauled, with the existing programme of study scrapped to make way for new lessons designed by industry and universities.
On Tuesday, Home Secretary Theresa May halted the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon and announced plans to bring in a "forum bar" which would allow judges to decide if such cases should be tried in Britain.
Colin Powell is the media-revered Republican high priest who, it turns out, as secretary of state used a personal computer connected to a private telephone line to send and receive emails to staffers, friends and foreign leaders without having to go through State Department servers, according to NPR.
A High Court judge will rule on whether Home Secretary Alan Johnson was wrong to allow the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon, it was announced today.
But Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, in a recent speech warning of the dangers of computer attacks, cited the Aramco sabotage as "a significant escalation of the cyber threat".
Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state, today turned over four computer hard drives used to draft correspondence during the presidential race for an inspection by news organizations to determine if any records were destroyed during the election stalemate in Florida last November.
There was an attempt to hack into the computer of the secretary of the Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad by a forged email on 3 November.
If the Department had agreed to the request, it would have shown a list of websites visited on the Home Secretary's computer account for a week.
The county council also supplied other types of computer systems to healthcare providers, such as appointment systems, physician-secretary communication systems for dictation, and an electronic prescribing system.
Beyond the concerns about Mr. Buyer, other Democrats said they might call for an investigation into why aides to Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state, said work done on computers during the Florida stalemate had been erased, a potential violation of state public records laws.
