Back in the Dark Ages marauders would routinely raid various principalities and carry off everything that wasn’t nailed down. Acting either independently or under the auspices of one warlord or another, these raiders pretty much acted with impunity. Fast forward to 2012 and it’s a wonder how little progress has been made stopping “digital” raids in these more modern times.

A member of the infamous Anonymous-LulzSec hacker groups, Hector Monsegur, known as Sabu, appears to be the primary snitch in the arrest of five other members of LulzSec announced by the FBI  this week.

The Boston Police Department is the latest in a growing list of law enforcement agencies -- federal, state and local -- whose sites have been hacked, defaced and temporarily made inoperable by the group that calls itself Anonymous.

Anonymous has struck again in one of its most outrageous and daring hacks ever -- the loose-knit group of worldwide hackers became participants in a cross-country, cross-Atlantic conference call between branches of the FBI and Scotland Yard.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence this week that cyberthreats will equal or surpass the threat from counterterrorism in the relatively near future.

The FBI is in the market for a system that can turn data scraped from social media and news sites into useful anti-terrorist and criminal intelligence. It wants information about domestic and global threats displayed on maps "using mash-up technology," according to a "request for information" given to agency vendors last week.

The FBI, acting in concert with law enforcement authorities in other countries (primarily New Zealand), took down the popular website Megauploads by seizing its servers and other assets, shutting down its domains and arresting the people who run the site. It was a well-planned, coordinated attack that missed a few people, but got most of the principals.

Koobface, the Russian cybergang that can’t shoot straight, soon may be a thing of the past. If the FBI has its way, the gang's penchant for leaving mother Russia to frolic in such places as Monte Carlo may turn out to be its undoing.

Gathering intelligence is a lot like creating a mosaic: The best intelligence is developed by accumulating large numbers of small pieces of information. Eventually, the entity gathering the information gets a complete picture. That's why the latest hack attack by the Chinese government -- this time on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- is both fascinating and disturbing.