In the first ruling of its kind, a New York magistrate said Monday he won’t require Apple to assist the government in unlocking a drug dealer’s iPhone. US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled that Congress has already forbidden what the government wants. Orenstein, taking Apple’s position, ruled that President Bill Clinton-era legislation requires telcos to ensure that their facilities have surveillance capabilities like wiretapping. But the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, the judge noted, generally barred companies from having to decrypt messages.

The credit card company has announced that its customers will soon be able to replace their passwords with a selfie and a fingerprint to verify their identity to make payments online.

Biometric solutions currently in the market include facial recognition and scans of corneas or fingerprints. Checking a customer's heartbeat using wearable technology, such as smartwatches, is also being tested.

The attack takes advantage of the fact that the affected phones don’t have any authentication set up by default, but do have a vulnerability that is open to remote exploitation.

The attacker can use the phone to make, receive, and redirect calls, and also could upload new firmware to the device, Moore said. Someone with remote access to the VOIP phone also could make expensive calls to premium-rate numbers or use the line as a launching pad for fraud calls to the victim’s bank or other financial institutions.

The whole affair has been embarrassing for the Americans, who have had to ask the Cubans if they could have their highly sensitive missile back, says the BBC's Will Grant in Havana.

US officials were worried that Cuba could share the advanced technology inside the missile with countries such as North Korea, China or Russia, sources close to the investigation told the Wall Street Journal.

LeBlanc, who presented standalone spin-off show "Top Gear: The Races" and has appeared on the show twice before as a "star in a reasonably priced car", will join production "immediately", the BBC said in a statement.

Co-presenters Richard Hammond and James May followed Clarkson out of the door, and along with ex-"Top Gear" producer Andy Wilman have now signed up to produce a new online-only show for the streaming service Amazon Video. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has previously said that signing the trio was "very, very, very expensive."

“The existence of a master private key that can decrypt all calls past and present without detection, on a computer permanently available, creates a huge security risk, and an irresistible target for attackers.”

“Although the words are never used in the specification, MIKEY-SAKKE supports key escrow. That is, if the network provider is served with a warrant or is hacked into it is possible to recover responder private keys and so decrypt past calls without the legitimate communication partners being able to detect this happening,” Murdoch wrote in his analysis.

“By design there is always a third party who generates and distributes the private keys for all users. This third party therefore always has the ability to decrypt conversations which are encrypted using these private keys,” Murdoch said by email.

"Doctor's visit -- time for vaccines!" Zuckerberg, 31, wrote below the picture of Max. By Tuesday, the image had more than 3.2 million likes and over 88,552 comments. It also had been shared 33,149 times. If you're not up on Facebook metrics, let me just say that's a lot.

Zuckerberg has turned his Facebook profile into a soapbox. That's notable. On any given day, about 47.7 million Facebook followers check out what he has to say.

The company’s stock has fallen steadily over the past few months as concern persists over its stagnating user growth, which could affect its ability to grow ad revenue long term.

So far, however, Twitter hasn’t persuaded the market that it has regained its footing.

Facebook's aggression, though, is aimed hard at the enemy of all that is Facebook: the phone number. In a paragraph headlined "The Disappearance Of The Phone Number," Marcus sniffs at flip phones and suggests mere texting is also the activity of the backward.

It's all very well the company wanting to be the de facto Internet -- especially in places like India. But drier minds and eyes might wonder whether the wish to eradicate phone numbers has something to do with not everyone having yet given Facebook their phone numbers.

Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

Not everyone is cheering. Sweden’s embrace of electronic payments has alarmed consumer organizations and critics who warn of a rising threat to privacy and increased vulnerability to sophisticated Internet crimes.

“It might be trendy,” said Bjorn Eriksson, a former director of the Swedish police force and former president of Interpol. “But there are all sorts of risks when a society starts to go cashless.”