Turns out even His Holiness, with Buddha on his side, can’t protect himself against Chinese hackers, with 11 months of his personal emails being monitored according to new security reports. More

It’s a story tailor-made for the fear-mongering subset of news media. This week, a pair of gentlemen lured an unsuspecting virgin iPhone to a malicious website and — with no other input from the user — stole the phone’s entire database of sent, received and even deleted text messages in under 20 seconds, boasting that they could easily lift personal contacts, emails and your naughty, naughty photos as well. Thankfully for us level-headed souls, those gentlemen were Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, security researchers performing for the 2010 Pwn2Own hacking contest, and their $15,000 first prize ensures that the winning formula will go to Apple (and only Apple) for further study. Last year, smartphones emerged from Pwn2Own unscathed even as their desktop counterparts took a beating , but this makes the third year in a row that Safari’s gotten its host machines pwned .

U.S. authorities have tracked down the man who wrote the code used in the hacker attack on Google . He’s a “freelance security consultant” in China, and his participation makes it even harder for the Chinese government to deny involvement. The man’s role was an oblique one: while he wrote the code that took advantage of a security hole in Internet Explorer , he himself didn’t do any actual hacking. But according to the Financial Times, the Chinese government has “special access” to his work: “If he wants to do the research he’s good at, he has to toe the line now and again,” the US analyst said

Next week, for the first time, the public will be able to see how our government might respond to a full-fledged act of cyber terrorism, in a simulation that will include top intelligence and security officials. On February 16, the Bipartisan Policy Center-hosted event, dubbed Cyber ShockWave, will assemble many top officials in the “White House situation room”—recreated by set designers in a conference room at the Mandarin Hotel—to respond to a multifacted cyber attack of which they will have no previous knowledge. The attack, designed by security experts and embellished by professional scriptwriters (really), will unfold dynamically throughout the course of the simulation. The participants, including former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponter and former Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend among others, will have to figure out a course of action on the fly. The fun part: we’ll get to see how they do.

Next week, for the first time, the public will be able to see how our government might respond to a full-fledged act of cyber terrorism, in a simulation that will include top intelligence and security officials. On February 16, the Bipartisan Policy Center-hosted event, dubbed Cyber ShockWave, will assemble many top officials in the “White House situation room”—recreated by set designers in a conference room at the Mandarin Hotel—to respond to a multifacted cyber attack of which they will have no previous knowledge. The attack, designed by security experts and embellished by professional scriptwriters (really), will unfold dynamically throughout the course of the simulation. The participants, including former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponter and former Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend among others, will have to figure out a course of action on the fly. The fun part: we’ll get to see how they do. Though the government has held similar simulations in the past, this will be the first time the process will be open to the public

Black Hawk Safety Net , an online hacker training resource with 12,000 paying members and another 170,000 free members, was brought down recently by Chinese authorities. Only three operators of the site were arrested, while the official site itself, 3800hk.com, was put out of commission when the company’s 9 servers were seized. The site provided resources on hacking techniques and trojan software. Black Hawk Safety net had been attributed with a 2007 attack on—wait for it—an internet cafe that put dozens— dozens —of poor souls out of internet access for 60 hours.

Frustrated after seeing his father try to make a replacement car key without the ID code, Steve Randall and Ted Schwarzkopf created the Electronic Key Impressioner . If it works, it could be great news for locksmiths. And maybe thieves too. The Electronic Key Impressioner plugs into the car keyhole and, after aligning it properly, it connects with a computer via USB, sucking up the code after you select the car type you are trying to crack.

Credit cards numbers? Please. Medical records? Booooring. The modern hacker knows that the real money’s in carbon emission trade credits

One of the cooler stories out the whole Google-China debacle is that Google hacked the hackers . It “began a secret counteroffensive,” breaking into a computer in Taiwan, gathering evidence the attacks originated from mainland China, possibly orchestrated by the government. Google’s delta force found evidence that the hackers had attacked 33 other companies, like Adobe, and that the onslaught actually came from China, not Taiwan. More to the point, “much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them.” Unfortunately, Google can’t prove the Chinese government’s involvement 100 percent, which is why the Obama administration is pussy-footing around the issue. Still, it’s pretty awesome: If you hack Google, they will hack your ass right back

I wonder what’s going through Mitch “oorange3″ Adair’s head in this picture. Is he annoyed that someone made yet another joke about hacking the Gibson or did he just lose the US Cyber Challenge ? Either way, that’s one unhappy-looking hacker. The US Cyber Challenge in which Adair participated is a huge competition with the goal of hacking your opponents’ computers while defending your own from attacks. It’s not just a silly game for the sake of showing off either: The competition is designed to find talented individuals and recruit them to defend our country, companies, and computers from evil-doers’ cyberattacks