The past year has witnessed some doozies when it comes to network security boondoggles. NetworkWorld's Ellen Messmer and Tim Greene put together a list of 10 of the most spectacular. Here's a sneak peak:

• A Chinese Internet service provider hijacked the web for 18 minutes in April when it sent out incorrect routing data. Fifteen percent of traffic over the Internet, including data on U.S. military and government sites, was rerouted through Chinese servers by China Telecom.
• McAfee sent out an errant anti-virus update, causing chaos for numerous customers, including a number of enterprises, which effectively experienced denial-of-service-like attacks.
• Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) was caught gathering private information on individuals off of WiFi networks as it collected data for its maps. The company said it didn't mean to do it and promised to destroy the information.
• Hackers came across the email addresses for more than 100,000 iPad customer accounts by exploiting a flaw in a public-facing application on AT&T's (NYSE: T) website.

For more:
- see Messmer and Greene's article at NetworkWorld

Related Articles:
Top 20 Government Data Breaches of 2010...So Far
Survey: Most organizations don't delete data securely
Six likely security holes in your organization
Gartner: Companies spend 5 percent of IT budget on security
Corporate America's dumbest security bungles