 | Good afternoon |  |  | Online shoe retailer Zappos told customers this weekend that it has been the victim of a cyber attack affecting more than 24 million customer accounts in its database. The popular retailer, which is owned by Amazon.com, said customers' names, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of credit card numbers and scrambled passwords were stolen. The company, which is well known for its customer service, said due to the high volume of customer calls it is expecting it will temporarily switch off its phones and direct customers to contact via email.
Hackers disrupted online access to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, El Al Airlines and three banks in what the government described as a cyber-offensive against Israel. The attacks came just days after an unidentified hacker, proclaiming Palestinian sympathies, posted the details of thousands of Israeli credit card holders and other personal information on the Internet in a mass theft. Israel opened an agency to tackle cyber attacks earlier this month.
A hacker who goes by the name of "Yama Tough" threatened Saturday to release the full source code for Symantec's flagship Norton Antivirus software on Tuesday. Last week, Yama Tough released fragments of source code from Symantec products along with a cache of emails. The hacker said all the data was taken from Indian government servers.
Use of microblogging in China quadrupled in 2011 compared with the previous year, with nearly half of all Chinese Internet users now taking to the near-instant service to gather news and spread views, a government Internet think tank said. Microblogging, or "Weibo" as it is known in China, allows users to send short messages of 140 characters or less to their followers. The total number of Weibo users rose 296 percent to 249.9 million in 2011, data from the China Internet Network Information Center showed.
The long-term approach of major Japanese investors, combined with an aversion to foreign and hostile takeovers and uncertainty over lawsuits stemming from the $1.7 billion accounting scandal, will likely make any change of ownership at Olympus a gradual process, writes Isabel Reynolds. Olympus is expected to stay listed for the time being and sources with the company's powerful main bankers, who are also shareholders, say they would be prepared to wait for the firm to recover on its own. | | | LATEST NEWS | | Plodding PC sales weigh down Microsoft profit | | January 16, 2012 12:18 AM ET | | SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is starting the new year much as it did the one just ended - grappling with weak computer sales tearing a hole in its core Windows business, while it gropes its way slowly into the faster-growing mobile phone and tablet markets. | Full Article | | Wikipedia to shut for 24 hours to stop anti-piracy act | | January 16, 2012 04:24 PM ET | | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wikipedia, the popular community-edited online encyclopedia, will black out its English-language site for 24 hours to seek support against proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said threatens the future of the Internet. | Full Article | | Friends turn to social media to find cruise ship survivors | | January 16, 2012 01:02 PM ET | | ROME (Reuters) - Friends and relatives of passengers who were on board a capsized Italian cruise liner carrying more than 4,000 people have turned to social media to search for loved ones and vent their anger and shock at the disaster in which at least six people died. | Full Article | | Reprise for Nortel debacle as Toronto trial opens | | January 16, 2012 12:53 PM ET | | TORONTO (Reuters) - The fraud trial of three former executives at Canada's bankrupt Nortel Networks opens on Monday, a decade after their alleged crimes, as one of the most spectacular casualties of the 1990's dot-com bubble takes a curtain call in a Toronto courtroom. | Full Article | | | BUSINESS NEWS
| | European shares stabilize, economic data eyed | | January 16, 2012 02:49 PM ET | | LONDON (Reuters) - European shares and the euro gradually recovered on Monday from early losses triggered by the mass downgrade of euro zone sovereign ratings last week, but they still looked vulnerable amid rising fears of a disorderly Greek debt default. | Full Article | | S&P downgrades euro zone's EFSF bailout fund | | January 16, 2012 04:22 PM ET | | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Rating agency Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating of the European Financial Stability Facility, the euro zone's rescue fund, by one notch to AA+ on Monday, three days after it cut the ratings of France and Austria by the same margin. | Full Article | | Germany rejects rescue fund boost, Greece under pressure | | January 16, 2012 04:21 PM ET | | BERLIN/MADRID (Reuters) - Germany, the only major euro zone member to retain a top-notch credit rating, refused on Monday to consider boosting the bloc's rescue fund, while Greece was under pressure to urgently break a deadlock in debt swap talks if it is to avoid an unruly default. | Full Article | | Carnival and cruise sector count cost of disaster | | January 16, 2012 02:11 PM ET | | LONDON (Reuters) - The cruise ship industry faces an uphill task to restore confidence among customers spooked by images of the stricken Costa Concordia flipped on its side in Italian waters on Monday and could suffer a hit to sales in a key booking period. | Full Article | | | | U.S. TOP NEWS | | | | | RELATED VIDEO | | |  |  | | A daily digest of breaking business news, coverage of the US economy, major corporate news and the financial markets. Register Today. |  | | Your daily briefing on the latest tech developments from around the world from Reuters expert tech correspondents. Register Today. |  | | The latest Reuters articles on M&A, IPOs, private equity, hedge funds and regulatory updates delivered to your inbox each day.. Register Today. | | | » MORE NEWSLETTERS | | | ODDLY ENOUGH | | | | | | |
