Top 10 Stories

Piper Jaffray & Co. on Thursday predicted relatively strong holiday sales for Target Corp. despite the recent theft of credit and debit card information at its stores. Thanks to strong sales of video-game consoles and a solid debut of its promotion to buy online, pick up in store, analyst Sean Naughton said he believes sales at stores open for at least a year will rise 1.5 percent, compared with his earlier prediction of flat results. Naughton’s upgraded...

Wearable gadgets and "smart" devices that can see, track motion and record activities will be in abundance at this year's International CES trade show. The world's primary electronics junket in Las Vegas next week will be flooded with smartwatches, wearable cameras and glasses, fitness trackers and other wirelessly connected gadgets. Last year's hot technologies -- 3D printing and 4K TVs and displays -- will also be prominently featured.

Robbing ATMs is nothing new. There's the everlasting stick-em-up, the bogus card scheme,ATM phishing, and more. But, it appears new ways are being invented to pull off successful cash machine heists. It was recently revealed that thieves were able to access loads of ATM money by injecting machines with malware using USB drives, according to the BBC. These break-ins involved both low- and high-tech techniques. Apparently, the criminals manually cut holes in the machines to plug in USB...

The U.S. National Security Agency is attempting to build a new breed of supercomputer that theoretically could make short work of cracking most keys used for encrypted communications. The project to build "a cryptographically useful quantum computer" is part of an $80 million research project called "Penetrating Hard Targets" that is taking place at a campus in College Park, Maryland, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper quoted documents it said were provided by former NSA...

Cyber security company FireEye has acquired Mandiant, a firm known for responses to network breaches, in a deal worth more than $1bn (£608m). Mandiant rose to prominence last year after it alleged that a secretive branch of China's military had stolen data from more than 100 global firms. The deal, one of the largest ones in the sector recently, comes amid increased worries over cyber security.

Snapchat said it will release an updated version of its app after hackers downloaded usernames and phone numbers for 4.6 million accounts. It said the update will allow users to opt out of appearing in its feature, Find Friends, after they have verified their phone number. Find Friends allows users to upload their address book contacts to find others who are also using the service.  

Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it monitors users' private messages. The lawsuit claims that when users share a link to another website via a private message, Facebook scans it to profile the sender's web activity. It alleges that Facebook systematically intercepts messages to mine user data and profits by sharing it with data aggregators, advertisers and marketers.  

Cisco is investigating a claim by Germany’s Der Spiegel that the company is among many whose devices have been backdoored by the NSA to assist in the agency’s espionage efforts.  

Open letter to RSA from Mikko Hypoennen withdrawing from his keynote at RSA 2014.

Windows 8.1 PCs that also run Android should 'scare the heck' out of Microsoft, says analyst.