Spycraft. (tr.robinson/flickr)

An unnamed IT drone working for Switzerland's NDB spy agency may have endangered counter-terrorism efforts around the world by stealing terabytes of classified data.

Swiss authorities warned the United States and the United Kingdom about the breach after the suspect was arrested last summer. The tech, described by one Reuters source as "very talented," was behaving suspiciously and authorities say he was disgruntled after feeling his views about operating the agency's network were ignored. Reuters reports the man then collected massive amounts of data on hard drives and simply carried them out of government facilities.

The tech, who is out of prison while authorities continue investigating the theft, allegedly sought to sell the information to other countries or anyone willing to buy. Reuters details why this is a huge and potentially serious theft:

One of the sources familiar with the investigation said that intelligence services like the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, routinely shared data on counter-terrorism and other issues with the NDB. Swiss authorities informed U.S. and British agencies that such data could have been compromised, the source said.

Reuters and various Swiss media report the NDB tech sabotaged his efforts when he tried to open a bank account with UBS. Suspicious bank officials flagged the account and investigators tracked it back to the technician.

Swiss investigators think the tech was apprehended before he could sell his wares--but they aren't sure. If he managed to release any of the data into the wilds of the Internet, we're sure Wikileaks or Anonymous will gleefully let us know.

Hackers were likely not ski-masked in this case.

Hackers from outside the United States recently penetrated the website for South Carolina's Department of Revenue and reportedly made off with 3.6 million Social Security numbers and 16,000 unencrypted credit and debit card numbers.

South Carolina has a population of approximately 4.5 million, meaning the compromised Social Security numbers could affect most of state.

South Carolina's governor held a press conference about the breach on Friday:

Gov. Nikki Haley said in a press conference Friday afternoon that the breech had been fixed and the State is working on an unprecendented (sic) plan to resolve the issue. She said a full investigation of all government agencies will be done to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Authorities first learned of the hack in early October but say evidence indicates it occurred in late August, 2012.

The Secret Service is the federal agency in charge of the investigation. They have been tight-lipped about the theft past acknowledging that it occurred.

South Carolina has set up a hotline regarding the hack. Authorities recommend anyone who has paid taxes to the state in the last 14 years call 1-866-578-5422.

This guy.

In a new SecureList blog post, Kaspersky Lab researcher Vicente Diaz has described a new frontier in a relatively old online scam. Phishers, tired of building fake websites to lure victims into unintentionally giving away email addresses, passwords or even financial information are beginning to use Google Docs to siphon data from the unwary.

This approach makes it easy for spammers to bypass filters, as emails with links to a shared Google document don't get flagged, giving the recipient the illusion that the message is legit.

Mr. Diaz writes that tricking someone into entering personal data into a sketchy Google Doc is only "the tip of the iceberg":

Google Docs allows hosting other contents such as executable files in different formats, resulting in a very convenient and free hosting service for malicious content. As a bonus the connection is HTTPS by default, making it even more convenient for cybercriminals the use of this service.

HTTPS is the communications protocol that supposedly means a web page is secure and any data entered in a form on that page won't be intercepted by a cyber-thief.

The Google Docs dodge is fairly new but may not be all that rare, as spammers are catching on to the fact that it's so easy to make a target believe they're looking at a legitimate document.

Until anti-spam programs begin to learn and account for this ploy the best defense is skepticism. If you have no idea why anyone would share a Google document with you, don't even click the link.

Michael Jackson

Eventually, everything will be hacked. That feels like the takeaway from the revelation that enterprising hackers have ganked late music superstar Michael Jackson's back catalog--over 50,000 files. It appears to be the hacking equivalent of a major bank heist if you factor in the amount paid to Jackson's estate when the catalogue was purchased 2 years ago:

Record company bosses paid $250 million (£156 million) to Jackson's estate in 2010 for the catalogue, including unheard material from studio sessions when the superstar recorded Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad.

According to a report in the U.K. Sunday Times, Sony found "a breach" in their system that revealed the loss. Contact Music reports songs include Jackson performing with the likes of Freddie Mercury and will.i.am. Sony has been aware of the loss for almost a year but only acknowledged it yesterday.