Fondness for finger causes German thief&#39;s downfall
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A German thief got nabbed after he tore off his finger during a bungled break-in then went back to retrieve it, police said on Wednesday.
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A father of two in Germany stunned authorities when he chased down an auto thief by car, leapt onto the roof of the stolen vehicle and then phoned through instructions to police as the crook sped off with him.
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German authorities were able to pin a burglary committed in April on a suspected serial thief after he left a half-eaten slice of salami carrying a sliver of his DNA at a crime scene, police said on Thursday.
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The noose appears to be tightening around one of Europe's largest software counterfeiting rings as a German court sentenced a second member of the network to prison on Monday, and handed a sentence to his father for helping run front operations.
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Informants, seeking a reward from Microsoft, led police to the German student.
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A German banker who stole money from  rich clients to help poor ones has been sentenced to two years  and 10 months in prison, a court said Thursday. The  45-year-old, dubbed by German media as a modern day Robin Hood,  diverted 2.1 million euros ($2.79 million) to clients he felt  were needy while holding a senior position at a savings bank in  the southern region of Tauberfranken.
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When Javier Casquero handed over the keys to his prized Porsche 911 he presumed it was in safe hands. He was wrong
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German police said on Saturday that a 19-year-old from Helmstedt, Lower Saxony, has admitted to hijacking the domain of the eBay Germany Web site and is likely to face charges of computer sabotage.
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Crackers Updates to Germany's computer crime laws banning so-called "hacking tools" have been criticised as ill-considered and counterproductive.â¦
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A German journalist has been fined 100 euros (68 pounds) after he filmed three artists stealing water from Pope Benedict's garden hose in Bavaria to sell on Internet auction site EBay.
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Â· Stylish appearance and air of affluence fooled staff  Â· Armed raiders take rings, necklaces and diamonds
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A German pensioner has been arrested for  vandalism after being caught spraying the word &quot;Puff&quot;  (whorehouse) on houses in the Bavarian town of Hof, near the  Czech border, a police spokeswoman said on Monday.
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Earlier this year, I interviewed Dutch security expert Ton Cremers on the future of museum theft. &quot;With today&#39;s technology, if someone wanted the Mona Lisa, or those Vermeers in the Frick, they would never try to sneak in,&quot; he predicted.
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(InfoWorld) - When it comes to who can and who can't be a hacker, the German government appears to want its cake and eat it, too. AfterÂ passing antihacking legislationÂ earlier this year to crack down on the sharp rise in computer attacks in the public and private sectors, the government is now floating a plan to develop and smuggle its own spyware on to the hard drives of suspected terrorists through e-mail messages. German Interior Minister Wolfgang SchÃ¤uble has been feverishly seeking support for a new security law that would allow federal authorities to investigate suspects' Internet use and stored data without their knowledge, ever since the country's Federal Court of JusticeÂ halted their cybersnooping activitiesÂ in February. The judges argued that the hacking of computers by the police is not permitted under Germany's strict phone-tapping laws and that legislation would be needed to enable covert surveillance. SchÃ¤uble's efforts to introduce a security law with wider police surveillance powers have, however, led to a heated debate that nearly exploded late last week when a copy of the proposed security law was leaked to the German media. The measure would allow authorities to install Trojans carrying remote forensic software on suspects' hard drives. While SchÃ¤uble has said that government cyberspying would only be conducted in a handful of exceptional cases and only on those suspected of planning terrorist attacks, critics say he may have overstepped his bounds. Max Stadler, a security expert with the German Free Democratic Party, warned in a ZDF television interview last week that the Interior Ministry's spyware plan would weaken the trust of German citizens in government. He referred to the government Trojan as "an invasion into the private sphere." Magnus Kalkuhl, a virus specialist at the German office of Russian security software vendor Kaspersky Lab, said the plan "would undermine the very purpose of security software, which is to plug -- not make -- security holes." The idea of allowing officials in one specific country to snoop also disturbs Kalkuhl. "What's going to prevent police in Germany from breaking into computers in Italy?" he asked. And even if the government approves the use of spyware, Wolfgang Wieland, a member of the Green Party, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper last week that he questions the success of a measure that assumes suspects know little about computers and won't detect and remove Trojans and other spyware. It's naive to believe that terrorists, who live in a world of conspiracy, would trip over something as obvious as e-mail from an unfamiliar source, he said. In defense of the plan, SchÃ¤uble said in an interview with Deutschlandradio last week that police need to keep pace with terrorists and criminals, who shouldn't be allowed to use cyberspace as a protected area. The plan, he said, isn't to control everyone's computer but rather only those machines used by suspected criminals and terrorists and only for a limited period of time. JÃ¶rg Ziercke, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), said in an interview with the German magazine Stern that the planned remote forensic software can't be used broadly because it must be tailored to run on each targeted computer. "We're talking about 10 such measures a year," he said. The German government has released no technical details of how the sypware will operate. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry declined to comment, citing security regulations. The use of spyware by crime fighters isn't new. For instance, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation uses a tool, called CIPAV (computer and Internet Protocol address verifier), which can record IP addresses and send this data back to government computers. Nor is Germany the only European country debating spyware legislation. Neighboring Switzerland and Austria are reportedly considering laws that will give police greater powers to monitor computers online. Neither of the countries has released any information on their spyware plans. No firm date is set when German parliamentarians are expected to vote on the proposed security law. But with Islamic radicals targeting German troops and others working in Afghanistan in recent weeks, SchÃ¤uble has spoken of a heightened threat level that makes the spyware issue of increasing urgency. Â
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CROMWELL, Ind. - A thief with a taste for pork put a damper on a fundraiser for scholarships by making off with nearly 350 pounds of porkburgers and hot dogs, police said.
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German police said they seized some 30,000 fake tokens used for buying beer at the Oktoberfest, which could have cost the world's biggest beer festival nearly half a million dollars.
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A German grandmother landed her 19-year-old grandson in trouble at the weekend by sending him a fake 100-euro note which he tried to spend, police said on Monday.