A former prison inmate at Plymouth County Correctional Facility pleaded guilty to the federal crime of damaging the prison’s computer systems.

Acting US Attorney Michael K. Loucks and Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation-Boston Field Division announced September 15 that Francis G. Janosko, 43 pleaded guilty to one count of intentional damage to a protected computer in Federal District Court in Boston.

During 2006 and 2007 While an Inmate at Plymouth, Janosko hacked a computer provided to inmates for legal research. The computer had restrictions disallowing use of email or Internet and various other functionality. Janosko was also able to gain access to a file containing names, addresses and social security of around 1,000 current and former employees of Plymouth County Correctional Facility. Janosko also attempted, albeit unsuccessfully to access a vital prison management software.

Janosko had been released from Plymouth County Correctional for some time but has been incarcerated since his apprehension in November 2008. The FBI and the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office investigated this case. Assistant US Attorney Scott L. Garland of Michael K. Loucks’s Computer Crime Unit is prosecuting the case.

Judge O’Toole set the sentencing date for December 15. Under the terms set forth in a plea bargain Janosko faces 18 months in prison.

In a report outlining the updated priorities of US intelligence, China and Russia were placed alongside Iran and North Korea on a list of nations that challenge US interests at home and abroad, the French press agency AFP reports.

China was added, amongst other things, for “increasing natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization,” while Russia was singed out because, despite a growing partnership with the US on fighting things like nuclear terrorism, “it may continue to seek avenues for reasserting power and influence in ways that complicate US interests,” according to the AFP.

The National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), a report released every four years, calls China and Russia “aggressive” in the cyberworld and while the NIS did not explicitly name either countries as a cyber threat, it did outline cause for concern.

“At the tactical level, they are intent on penetrating our critical infrastructure, information systems, and leading industries,” it said, AFP reports. The report went on to recommend the US employ tactical strategies “across the cyber domain to protect critical infrastructure.”

The report also lists Iran and North Korea, unsurprisingly, as parts of its main opposition. It stressed the possibility of further partnerships with China and Russia to help strengthen relationships, however saw no hope of immediate reconciliation with either countries.

“Iran poses an array of challenges to US security objectives in the Middle East and beyond because of its nuclear and missile programs, support of terrorism, and provision of lethal aid to US and coalition adversaries…North Korea continues to threaten peace and security in East Asia because of its sustained pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, its transfer of these capabilities to third parties, its erratic behavior, and its large conventional military capability.”

Its assessment of Iran and North Korea was much harsher than of its two newcomers.

The report also highlighted Al-Qaeda as a continuing threat to both Americans and American interests at home and abroad and said the US’ main objective for the next four years will be to enhance “cyber security”, combat extreme terrorism and ensure weapons of mass destruction are not created or bought by any opposing nations.

The promotion and spread of democracy was not listed as a main priority.

When our MacBook Pro was new, we assumed that while a 120 GB hard drive wasn’t exactly the largest Apple offered the max was 250 GB, by the way it was plenty roomy enough to last us. Fast forward to two years later, where it seems that every few days our computer is constantly barking at us that the startup disk is almost full, Parallels runs the computer to a halt, and iPhoto was slow enough before we had to move all of our photos to our Time Capsule. Plus we hate toting around an external. There’s got to be a better solution, right?

It turns out that there are a couple ingenious hackers out there who have realized that the space your optical drive sits in is some very valuable real estate space which could easily be repurposed and filled with another hard drive. One intrepid blogger, Reid, has decided to throw his MacBook warranty out the window, removed the optical drive and replaced it with a 256 solid-state hard drive, seeing as they both run via a SATA connector. Check out his blog to see the nitty-gritty of what he did.

While Reid could have just as easily replaced the optical drive with a standard drive did you know they make 1 TB laptop drives now? solid state drives have many advantages over your standard drives. The flash memory inside a solid state hard drive has no moving parts, so they are more durable and last longer than your standard hard drives. Oh, and they’re FAST. How fast do you say? Reid found a seven-fold increase in speed in benchmark tests he ran.

The best part of all these shenanigans is that in the interest of bettering the human race, Reid is offering to help you trick out your laptop too. He’s posted all the instructions be warned, there’s some soldering required and a list of the $10 of parts you need to purchase from Amazon.com. Or for the slightly more adventurous, he’ll ship you the connector for $30. Or, if the whole performing surgery on your laptop makes you feel a bit queasy, you can ship your laptop to him with the hard drive you want installed, and for $35 plus $14 shipping, he’ll do everything for you.

We haven’t handed our laptop over to Reid €¦yet so remember these caveats: we don’t know Reid, though we’re sure he’s a stand-up guy, so you’re shipping your precious laptop to a blogger while simultaneously voiding your warranty. That being said, comparable services on other sites run $150 plus shipping for an install alone. Granted, MCE will perform a similar service and install a brace that keeps the hard drive from banging around, which might be important if you’re not installing a SSD, but it’s still quite a bit steeper than what Reid is promising.

Either way, with optical drives in notebooks going the way of the dodo, this just may be the life saving hack that will convince us to keep our notebook around for a little while more.

The bad guys are going virtual more and more, and American businesses and government networks are getting victimized at a record pace, according to an FBI report.

“The increasing number of such crimes not only impacts the economy but threatens national security,” the FBI said Friday.

The man at the head of the opposition is the FBI’s Shawn Henry, recently appointed head of their Cyber Division. He told reporters Wednesday that the FBI has literally thousands of open cyber crime cases.

“One case in point: We joined our international partners yesterday in announcing a major takedown of a transnational criminal network that was buying and selling stolen financial information through an online forum known as ‘Dark Market‘,” the FBI said Friday.

“The business of the United States is done on the Internet,” said Henry, “And the information that flows electronically 24/7 is increasingly the target of not only identity thieves and scammers, but organized crime groups, terrorists, and overseas governments.”

Yes, even other countries are trying to virtually penetrate the U.S. Henry says about 24 different governments have an “aggressive interest” in obtaining information from or making attacks against American cyber infrastructure.

Henry says that individual hackers and crackers have grouped up into “virtual gangs.”

“In years gone by, if a gang wanted to rob a bank, it needed crooks with various skills — safe cracker, get-away driver, look-out, etc. That’s essentially what we’re seeing in the cyber world today, only these virtual gang members have never met in the physical world,” Henry said.

“There are organized groups that are very successful.”