thefts

In the summer of 2005, one of the biggest scandals in the history of video games broke: Hot Coffee. If you don't recall the brouhaha over some very sexual content that was found to be hidden on the disc for Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, then you probably weren't reading much news that summer.

The scandal embroiled one of the most popular game franchises in the industry's history, and it wasn't because the game allowed players to shoot cops or run over hookers. Grand Theft Auto, which emerged from Scotland, took the world by … Read more

Rockstar Games is known for not pulling any punches with its incredibly popular video games offered on consoles, desktops, and mobile gaming devices. Frequently controversial and in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, Rockstar's games are violent and give players the freedom to do whatever they want -- both good and bad.

This week, Rockstar added another of its classic games to the App Store with the same dark, compelling story lines and action-oriented gameplay that made the developer famous. So leave your morality at the door and make sure the kids are in bed, because when you're dealing with the gangster underworld in this collection of games, you often have to make deadly decisions.… Read more

The government's effort to prosecute corporate espionage was dealt a setback today when a federal appeals court ruled that downloaded code did not qualify as stolen under a federal theft statute.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled today that former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov was wrongly charged with theft of property under the National Stolen Property Act, which makes it illegal to steal trade secrets.

Aleynikov, 42, was convicted in December 2010 of downloading code for Goldman Sachs' high-speed computerized trading operations and uploading it to an overseas server before he left … Read more

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Almost everyone knows someone who has had their cell phone stolen. And most likely, there wasn't much that person could do about it. Some mobile carriers and the U.S. government are now trying to change that.

The Federal Communications Commission announced today that it is partnering with four major carriers to work toward curbing rampant cell phone theft, according to The New York Times. The plan is to jointly create a centralized database of lost or stolen cell phone information that will make it easy to track the devices and cutoff voice and data service.

"It's … Read more

Reports are making the rounds on the Internet of a security hole in Facebook's Android and iOS clients that could allow identity theft.

However, the threat posed to most users of mobile devices that use those platforms is apparently minimal, and the blame for the vulnerability is misplaced, Facebook says. According to a blog by U.K. app developer Gareth Wright, who discovered the alleged vulnerability, the social network's mobile clients didn't encrypt users' log-on credentials, leaving them open for hijacking over a USB connection or rogue app.

Wright wrote on his blog that he discovered the … Read more

The beauty of gall is that it is sometimes boundless.

You might feel that the story of 21-year-old Brit Ivan Barker proves this handsomely. For he recently stole a laptop belonging to Jacque Mathley.

Not too long afterward, as the Daily Mail tells it, Barker went back to Mathley's house in Stoke-on-Trent and knocked on the door.

He told Mathley he'd come to apologize. He told Mathley the police had instructed him to do it. Mathley, who is wheelchair-bound, seems to have believed this explanation, as he let Barker into his house.

At some point during their conversation, … Read more

Copper theft has become something of sport of late. Even Facebook's new HQ endured a little.

However, sometimes the thieves aren't too sophisticated, which can lead to certain unforeseen problems.

A tale emerges from Leicester in the U.K., in which two copper thieves last year went to an electricity sub-station in order to steal copper cable from the sub-station's transformer.

The way the Leicester Mercury wraps it, Michael Harper, 36 and Richard Boyce, 50, went to the sub-station in order to steal the copper and, while they were at it, take some heroin.

It is unclear … Read more

Symantec said today that a 2006 security breach led to the theft of source code for some of its flagship products, backtracking on earlier statements that its network had not been hacked.

The security software maker, which had previously blamed the theft on a third party, acknowledged that hackers had infiltrated its own networks. The hackers obtained 2006-era source code for Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack), and PCAnywhere, the company said in a statement.

"Upon investigation of the claims made by Anonymous regarding source code disclosure, Symantec believes that the … Read more