Google may pull out of China

Internet giant Google may end its operations in China after hackers targeted the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, writes the BBC.

Google said it had found a "sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China".

It did not specifically accuse China's government, but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese site's results, as the government requires.

AOL will "significantly reduce" its UK staff as part of the firm's planned large-scale redundancies and office closures across Europe. The Internet pioneer said it could cut as many as 1 400 staff to keep in line with plans it announced in November, says Computing.co.uk.

AOL said at the end of last year that it would cut around a third of its workforce after becoming independent from Time Warner, although it hoped that many of its staff would leave voluntarily under a "separation programme".

However, just 1 100 out of 6 900 employees have voluntarily resigned so far, and so a large number of staff will be asked to leave.

A new encryption scheme for protecting 3G phone networks hasn't even gone into commercial use and already cryptographers have cracked it - at least theoretically, reports The Register.

In a paper published on Tuesday, the cryptographers showed that the Kasumi cipher, which is also referred to as A5/3, can be broken using what's known as a related-key attack, in which a message encrypted with one key is later changed to one or more different keys.

The team dubbed the technique a 'sandwich attack' because it was broken into three parts: two thick slices at the top and bottom, and a thin slice in the middle.

It doesn't take much malware to do a whole lot of damage, and Android users are in the crosshairs. Businesses and their users are threatened, and Google is slow to react, states PC World.

Google's Android Market relies on customers to flag dodgy apps, leaving businesses and other customers' smartphones open to attack by rogue apps until Google acts, sometimes days later.

Malware banking apps have already been removed from the Android Market, where it seems anyone can post what purports to be a banking application. Financial services and other companies should expect to see Android malware targeting their customers as criminals see Android's growing market share as creating new opportunities for mischief.