The intrusions did not compromise the tech-heavy exchange's trading platform, which executes investors' trades, but it was unknown which other sections of the network were accessed, according to the report.

The Nasdaq, which is thought to be as critical from a security standpoint as the national power grid or air traffic control operations, has been targeted by hackers before.

"Facebook, an endlessly cool place for so many people, becomes at the same time a goldmine for identity theft and dating - unfortunately, without the user's control."

"Scraping people's information violates our terms," said Barry Schnitt, Facebook's director of policy communications.

Moreover, it's a bit funny hearing Facebook complain about scraping of personal data that is quasi-public.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company's founder, made his name at Harvard in 2003 by scraping the names and photos of fellow classmates off school servers to feed a system called FaceMash. With the photos, Zuckerberg created a controversial system that pitted one co-ed against another, by allowing others to vote on which one was better looking.

The wall of scalps is a source of pride for Facebook's security team and is representative of the company's aggressive, no-holds-barred approach to keeping fraudsters and thieves away from its more than 500 million users.

On Christmas Day, the security staff started hearing complaints from political activists in Tunisia--who had been protesting against the government since December--that their Facebook accounts were being compromised.

Facebook came up with a solution to fix the problem and began rolling it out to users in Tunisia over the next week.

In a stunning development unprecedented in the modern history of the Internet, a country of more than 80 million people has found itself almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the world.

Early in the morning in Cairo, a series of complaints of mobile phone outages said Mobinil, the country's largest mobile provider, was no longer providing service.

Facebook announced today that it is now offering users the ability to use encryption to protect their accounts from being compromised when they are interacting with the site, something security experts have been seeking for a while.

"Starting today we'll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS. You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries, or schools," the post says.

German researchers have created software called X-Pire that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key.

Dr Backes said development work began about 18 months ago as potentially risky patterns of activity on social networks, such as Facebook, showed a pressing need for such a system.

Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on. Currently only a version that works with Firefox is available. Those without the viewer will be unable to see any protected image.

Google is ready to fire a shot across the bow of the so-called content farms, willing to acknowledge recent criticism of the quality of its search results but still not quite ready to detail specific remedies.

Google has been thinking for quite some time about how to deal with content that isn't obvious spam but is clearly not designed with the best interests of the user in mind, Cutts said.

Playboy's current app features no naked photos, in line with Apple's strict no nudity policy.

In April 2010, founder Steve Jobs wrote to a customer who complained about the company's stance, saying it was Apple's "moral responsibility" to keep porn off the iPhone.

"If you want porn, get an Android," he said, referring to the operating system used on rival smartphones.

The credit union used by members of the U.S. armed forces and their families has admitted that a laptop infected with malware was used to access a database containing the personal and financial information of customers.

PenFed says it doesn't know of any efforts to misuse the stolen information, but the organization's connection to members of the military, Department of Defense and other U.S. government agencies may well raise the spectre of state-sponsored attack that may, or may not have a financial motive.

Vodafone has confirmed it believes its secure customer database has been breached by an employee or dealer who has shared the access password, revealing the personal details of millions of customers.

The details are reportedly accessible from any computer because they are kept on an internet site rather than Vodafone's internal system.

Mobile phone dealers have also admitted that anyone with full access to the system can look up a customer's bills and make changes to accounts.