Cyber-spies have planted Java- and Flash-exploiting malware on web sites focused on human rights, defence and foreign policy. Over the last two weeks, the Shadowserver Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks internet threats, has discovered several such compromised web pages that download the malware through visitors’ browsers. The malware, which exploits known flaws in Adobe Flash and Java, is aimed at Mac and Windows systems.

Apple has banned the word ‘jailbreak’ from it’s U.S. iTunes store listings, the latest indication of its disapproval of hackers who muck around with their tightly secured products.

‘Jailbreaking’ refers to the practice of hacking into Apple’s products to allow them to play pirated software and media and, in the case of the iPhone and iPad, to be used on different mobile networks.

Last year the FBI and international police participated in an operation called “Operation Ghost Click” in which a group of Estonian hackers had distributed various DNS changing programs around the internet. According to VPNReviewz CEO Michael Maxstead, the bots distributed would change the users computers DNS settings, and all the users DNS solutions would be served by the hackers nameservers. DNS servers that, “would send the user to websites that would then install scripts to essentially strip the computer of all personal data.” 

A group of hackers calling themselves Cyberwarriors for Freedom attacked the official websites of the Eurovision song contest on Thursday, Reuters news agency said.

They are demanding that the host nation, Azerbaijan, cancel next week’s competition. 

But activist groups advocating a broad spectrum of issues – from human rights to religion – have also sought to seize the occasion to draw attention to their campaigns. In an Azeri-language message on the affected websites, the little-known hacker group demanded President Ilham Aliyev cancel the event altogether.

In the last few days, several iCloud users have stated on Apple’s forums that their iCloud accounts have been sending out spam, and appear to have been hacked. User øivindfromoslo wrote, “never used the iCloud e-mail account for anything (and I hate that apple forces it on you) but suddenly everyone in my contact list have received spam mails from that @me.com address.”

Don’t worry about hackers illegally accessing government systems. It turns out government workers and civil servants who are trusted with private citizen data are more likely to access your data illegally.

The U.K. government is haemorrhaging data — private and confidential citizen data — from medical records to social security details, and even criminal records, according to figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

To prove that the “Hacker Way” is alive and well at Facebook, the social network will be hosting an all-night, employee hackathon at its Menlo Park campus and satellite offices.

The event, dubbed Hackathon 31, is especially significant for the social network as it comes on the eve of its initial public offering and is meant to reinforce the mantra that, while its public listing is important, Facebook’s focus will always be on building and shipping products, a source familiar with the event told VentureBeat.

White House Cyber Czar Howard Schmidt is stepping down after two-and-a-half years in the role.

He is retiring to spend more time with his family and to pursue teaching in the cyber field, according to the Washington Post. White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said Schmidt had signed up for a two year stint, but had agreed to stay on a little longer. 

Hewlett-Packard is poised to eliminate as many as 30,000 jobs to compensate for dwindling demand for personal computers as more people connect to the Internet on smartphones and tablets, according to reports published Thursday. 

Twitter will be implementing the Do Not Track feature in the Mozilla Firefox browser, as announced Thursday by Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission at a New York Internet Week privacy panel. Twitter confirmed the FTC’s announcement, appropriately enough, in a tweet.

Carolyn Penner, a spokeswoman for Twitter, said, “We applaud the FTC’s leadership on Do Not Track, and are excited to provide the benefits of Do Not Track.”