Users were asked to tweet a photo of themselves with officers and add the hashtag #myNYPD as part of a social media campaign.

But while several people did so, the hashtag was also picked up by others who used it to identify tweets containing photos of the NYPD in more hostile situations.

The two most popular types of reflection attacks, which bounce network traffic off intermediate servers on the Internet, have shot up in popularity, accounting for 23 percent of all infrastructure attacks in the 2014 first quarter, Akamai stated in its Prolexic Quarterly Global DDoS Attack Report.

The largest attack seen by Akamai targeted a European entertainment firm, and exceeded 200G bps at its peak, the firm said. The attack lasted more than 10 hours, and amplified the attack volume through vulnerable servers using a combination of NTP and the Domain Name System (DNS) reflection.

Netflix's decision to pay Comcast for a direct connection to the Comcast network has resulted in significantly better video streaming performance for customers of the nation's largest broadband provider.

Comcast is among several ISPs who have refused payment-free interconnection. Verizon and AT&T are still demanding money from Netflix, with customers paying the price in poor video quality.

Facebook has a perception problem, which is largely driven by the fact it controls huge amounts of data and uses people as fodder for advertising. Facebook has been embroiled in numerous privacy controversies over the years, and was built from the ground up by a kid who basically double-crossed his Harvard colleagues to pull it off in the first place.

Perhaps the largest driver of skepticism towards Facebook is the level of control it gives users—which is arguably limited. Sure, you can edit your profile so other people can’t see your personal information, but Facebook can, and it uses your data to serve advertisers.

The record companies, which focus on a sampling of artists’ work in their suits, seek court orders to remove the infringing material and to require VK to implement content identification and removal measures like audio fingerprinting to prevent unauthorized uploading of infringing materials.

“VK’s music service, unlike others in Russia, is an unlicensed file-sharing service that is designed for copyright infringement on a large scale,” said International Federation of the Phonographic Industry chief executive Frances Moore.

Researchers have released technical details and attack code for 30 security issues affecting Oracle's Java Cloud Service. Some of the issues make it possible for attackers to read or modify users' sensitive data or to execute malicious code, the researchers warned.

The email addresses of LinkedIn users can easily be exposed via a web browser add-on tool, it has been revealed.

LinkedIn said it was taking legal action over the plug-in and advised users to uninstall it.

"We are doing everything we can to shut Sell Hack down. On 31 March LinkedIn's legal team delivered Sell Hack a cease-and-desist letter as a result of several violations," a spokesman told the BBC.

Alibaba, which controls nearly 80 percent of China's Internet shopping market, is expected to raise more than $15 billion, giving it a $130 billion valuation. That lofty target would challenge Facebook's record Internet IPO, which raised $16 billion in 2012.

Bas Bosschert has described a process by which the chat database can be read even if it's encrypted.

For Bosschert's attack to work, all that's required is that the user grants sufficient permissions to the malicious app. As he writes: “ since [the] majority of the people allows everything on their Android device, this is not much of a problem.”

Tor, the team behind the world’s leading online anonymity service, is developing a new anonymous instant messenger client, according to documents produced at the Tor 2014 Winter Developers Meeting in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Over the long term, TIMB will likely become the messenger of choice for Tor users. Software such as TorChat and BitMessage already have significant userbases and smart advocates, but with the full weight of the Tor Launcher and team behind it, there’s little reason to imagine TIMB won’t succeed.