Top 10 Stories

  BBC: An American teenager who blackmailed young women with compromising images grabbed by hacking their webcams has been jailed for 18 months. Jared James Abrahams broke into about 150 online accounts over a two-year period to commit the crimes.  

  Register: WhatsApp founder Jan Koum has insisted that his messaging service's privacy policies will stay the same after it's slurped by Facebook, while lamenting "baseless, unfounded and irresponsible" reports about how the social network may use users' data. "I want to make sure you understand how deeply I value the principle of private communication," he reassured users of the popular texting app.  

  Washington Post: The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden. A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine — one that can replay the...

Krebs on Security: Nationwide cosmetics and beauty retailer Sally Beauty today confirmed that hackers had broken into its networks and stolen credit card data from stores. The admission comes nearly two weeks after KrebsOnSecurity first reported that the company had likely been compromised by the same criminal hacking gang that stole 40 million credit and debit cards from Target. Previously, Denton, Texas-based Sally Beauty had confirmed a breach, but said it had no evidence that card data was stolen...

Computer Weekly: Last week the government made a series of changes to the immigration rules which it hoped would help UK businesses employ skilled workers from overseas. The Home Office has opened up its Exceptional Talent visa to provide specific routes that international digital technologists can apply for.  

Threatpost:  Google on Monday released fixes for a number of bugs in Chrome discovered and exploited during Pwn2Own, releasing new versions of the browser for Windows, Mac and Linux. This year’s Pwn2Own, which runs in conjunction with the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, showcased vulnerabilities and exploits in most of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer and Firefox, along with Chrome. The team from VUPEN, the French security and exploit-sales firm, took home several hundred thousand...

BBC: The inclusion of a valuable database of postcodes and addresses in the Royal Mail flotation has been criticised by an influential group of MPs. The Public Administration Committee said the Postcode Address File (PAF) was a national asset and should not have been included in privatisation.  

Softpedia: An employee of UK supermarket chain Morrisons has been arrested in connection with the investigation into the data breach suffered by the company last week. The suspect has not been named and his motives are still uncertain. The announcement was made a few hours ago by the West Yorkshire Police. The suspect has been arrested on suspicion of making or supplying an article for use in fraud.  

  Huffington Post: Attorneys for convicted hacker Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer will appear in court this week in a last-ditch attempt to win his freedom and overturn a verdict that could have a chilling effect on the work of researchers who help keep the Internet safe. Prosecutors have said Auernheimer, 28, is a publicity-hungry hacker who broke the law when he found a security flaw in an AT&T website three years ago that allowed him to...

  Malwarebytes: At one time, the Japan-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox handled 70 percent of all Bitcoin transactions. However, you’ve now likely heard the company has fallen into bankruptcy since losing over $400 million dollars in Bitcoins — with the company saying “there is a high possibility that the Bitcoins were stolen.”