Spanish police arrest 'Anonymous' PlayStation hackers

Spanish police arrested three suspected members of the so-called "Anonymous" group on Friday on charges of cyber-attacks against targets including Sony's PlayStation network, governments, businesses and banks.

The police said the accused, arrested in Almeria, Barcelona and Alicante, were guilty of coordinated computer hacking attacks from a server set up in a house in Gijon in the north of Spain.

Spanish police alleged the three arrested "hacktivists" had been involved in the recent attack on Sony's PlayStation online gaming store which crippled the service for over a month, as well as cyber-attacks on Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia and the Italian energy group Enel.

Members of the loosely coordinated "Anonymous" group, known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks made popular by the graphic novel "V for Vendetta", had also hacked government sites in Egypt, Algeria, Lybia, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand, police said.

"They are structured in independent cells and make thousands of simultaneous attacks using infected 'zombie' computers worldwide. This is why NATO considers them a threat to the military alliance," the police said in a statement.

"They are even capable of collapsing a country's administrative structure."

The arrests are the first in Spain against members of the "Anonymous" group following similar legal proceedings in the United States and Britain.

The police did not rule out further arrests.

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U.S. says can use force to respond to cyber-attacks

U.S. defence systems are constantly under attack in cyberspace and the Pentagon is working to identify hackers who will be responded to in kind or with traditional offensive action, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Saturday.

Gates was speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian security meeting, days after Google said it had disrupted a campaign aimed at stealing passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

It was the latest in a series of cyber attacks that have also targeted defence contractor Lockheed Martin and Sony Corp. Google said the latest breach appeared to originate in China but neither the company nor the U.S. government has said the Chinese government was responsible.

But the U.S. State Department has asked Beijing to investigate.

"We take the cyber threat very seriously and we see it from a variety of sources, not just one or another country," Gates said.

"One of the problems of cyber attacks is that attributability is a problem at some times. It's hard to know or takes a lot of time to figure out where an attack came from."

Gates said the Pentagon was examining threats from cyber-space in the context of defence responsibilities.

"There is no question that our defence systems are under attack all the time," he said.

"What does constitute an offensive act by a government? What would constitute an act of war by cyber that would require some kind of response, either in kind or kinetically?" he said.

"We could avoid some serious international tensions in the future if we could establish some rules of the road as early as possible to let people know what kinds of attacks are acceptable, what kinds of acts are not and what kinds of acts may in fact be acts of war.

reuters..

Hackers attack another Sony network, post data

 Hackers broke into Sony Corp's computer networks and accessed the information of more than 1 million customers to show the vulnerability of the electronic giant's systems, the latest of several security breaches undermining confidence in the company.

LulzSec, a group that claims attacks on U.S. PBS television and Fox.com, said it broke into servers that run Sony Pictures Entertainment websites. It published the names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of thousands of people who had entered contests promoted by Sony.

"From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING," the hacking group said in a statement. "Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?"

The security breach is the latest cyber attack against high-profile firms, including defence contractor Lockheed Martin and Google Inc.

LulzSec's claims came as Sony executives were trying to reassure U.S. lawmakers at a hearing on data security in Washington about their efforts to safeguard the company's computer networks, which suffered the biggest security breach in history in April.

Sony has been under fire since hackers accessed personal information on 77 million PlayStation Network and Qriocity accounts, 90 percent of which are users in North America or Europe.

Sony said at the time credit card information may have been stolen, sparking lawsuits and casting a shadow over its plans to combine content and hardware products via online services. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the April attack.

It later revealed hackers had stolen data from 25 million users of a separate system, its Sony Online Entertainment PC games network, in a breach discovered on May 2.

Sony said it was investigating the breach claimed by LulzSec and declined to elaborate. Sony shares in Tokyo fell 0.6 percent on Friday, in line with the broader market.

The latest attack, unlike that on the PlayStation Network, was not on a revenue-generating Website and was likely to have no impact on earnings, analysts said.

Reuters confirmed the authenticity of the data on several contestants that LulzSec said it had published.

CYBER SECURITY

Cyber security is quickly rising up the agenda for global policymakers.

The Australian government said on Friday it will develop a cyber defence strategy and the United States said in a report in May that hostile acts in cyberspace would be treated just like any other threat to the country.

The hacking attack on Lockheed may have compromised the safety of SecureID tokens made by EMC Corp, while that on Google targeted, among others, senior U.S. government officials' data.

"These allegations are very serious," U.S. Secretary of States Hillary Clinton said of the Google attack, which the Internet giant said appeared to originate in China.

In the latest attack on Sony, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission could choose to review the circumstances leading up to the breach if Sony Pictures Entertainment failed to use proper procedures for protecting the data of its customers.

John Bumgarner, chief technology officer for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit group that monitors Web threats, said he was not surprised that Sony's systems had again been breached.

"The system was unsecure," said Bumgarner, who last month warned of a string of security vulnerabilities across Sony's networks that he had identified.

He said he found vulnerabilities in the Sony Pictures Entertainment network as recently as last weekend.

The first hacking attacks in April prompted Sony to shut down its PlayStation Network and other services for close to a month.

The PlayStation games network and Qriocity, a video and music service, are back online except for some operations in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

Representatives criticized Sony in the Congressional hearing for waiting several days to notify customers of the breach.

LulzSec has claimed responsibility for several hacks over the past month. It said it defaced the U.S. PBS television network's websites, and posted data stolen from its servers on Monday to protest a "Front Line" documentary about WikiLeaks.

It has also broken into a Fox.com website and published data about contestants for the upcoming Fox TV talent show, "X Factor."

LulzSec also said on Thursday it had hacked into Sony BMG Music Entertainment Netherlands and Belgium. It previously disclosed an attack on Sony Music Japan.

Could a cyber war turn into a real one for U.S.?

The United States is warning that a cyber attack -- presumably if it is devastating enough -- could result in real-world military retaliation.

Easier said than done.

In the wake of a significant new hacking attempt against Lockheed Martin Corp, experts say it could be extremely difficult to know fast enough with any certainty where an attack came from. Sophisticated hackers can mask their tracks and make it look like a cyber strike came from somewhere else.

There are also hard questions about the legality of such reprisals and the fact that other responses, like financial sanctions or cyber countermeasures, may be more appropriate than military action, analysts say.

"There are a lot of challenges to retaliating to a cyber attack," said Kristin Lord, author of a new report on U.S. cyber strategy at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.

"It is extremely difficult to establish attribution, to link a specific attack to a specific actor, like a foreign government."

The White House stated plainly in a report last month that Washington would respond to hostile acts in cyberspace "as we would to any other threat to our country" -- a position articulated in the past by U.S. officials.

The Pentagon, which is finalizing its own report, due out in June, on the Obama administration's emerging strategy to deal with the cyber threat, acknowledged that possibility on Tuesday.

"A response to a cyber incident or attack on the U.S. would not necessarily be a cyber response ... all appropriate options would be on the table," Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

The sophistication of hackers and frequency of the attacks came back into focus after a May 21 attack on Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's top arms supplier.

Lockheed said the "tenacious" cyber attack on its network was part of a pattern of attacks on it from around the world. The U.S. Defense Department estimates that over 100 foreign intelligence organizations have attempted to break into U.S. networks.

Every year, hackers steal enough data from U.S. government agencies, businesses and universities to fill the U.S. Library of Congress many times over, officials say.

BEHIND THE CURVE

Several current and former national security officials said U.S. intelligence agencies did not appear particularly concerned about the Lockheed attack. One official said that similar cyber attacks directed at defense contractors and government agencies occurred all the time.

Some critics say the Obama administration is not moving fast enough to keep up with the cyber threat or to develop a strategy that fully addresses concerns about privacy and oversight in the cyber domain.

"The United States, in general, is well behind the curve," said Sami Saydjari, president of the privately held Cyber Defense Agency, pointing to "significant strategic advances" out of countries like China and Russia.

China has generally emerged as a prime suspect when it comes to keyboard-launched espionage against U.S. interests, but proving Beijing is behind any future plot would be difficult because of hackers' ability to misdirect, analysts say. China has denied any connection to cyber attacks.

The Pentagon's upcoming report is not expected to address different doomsday scenarios, or offer what Washington's response would be if, say, hackers wiped out Wall Street financial data, plunged the U.S. Northeast into darkness or hacked U.S. warships' computers.

"We're not going to necessarily lay out -- 'if this happens, we will do this.' Because again the point is if we are attacked, we reserve the right to do any number of things in response," Lapan said.

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German E.coli outbreak death toll rises to 10

A virulent form of E.coli bacteria blamed on infected cucumbers from Spain has killed 10 people in Germany and sickened 300, health officials said on Sunday while warning people not to eat suspect vegetables.

European health experts on Saturday said the outbreak of hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), which affects the blood, kidneys and, in severe cases, the nervous system, was the largest ever in Germany and the biggest of its kind worldwide.

An 86-year-old female patient died on Saturday, taking the toll of victims to 10, the University Hospital Luebeck said on Sunday.

The hospital in northern Germany said it was treating about 70 patients, including the dead woman's husband, for the infection and was expecting to receive 10 new cases a day.

Health officials have advised people in Germany to avoid eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce and some of these products have been removed from shop shelves.

"As long as the experts in Germany and Spain have not been able to name the source of the agent without any doubt, the general warning for vegetables still holds," German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner said on Sunday in a report in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

Austria's food safety agency ordered a recall of organically grown cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines supplied by a Spanish producer which is thought to be the source of the outbreak. It said 33 Austrian stores were affected.

"As it cannot be ruled out that products have already been sold to consumers, under the consumer protection law (we) must strongly urge consumers not to eat them under any circumstances and instead to dispose of them," the AGES agency said in a statement on its website.

The statement, posted late on Saturday after the European Union sounded the alarm bell, listed the Austrian stores affected by the recall. It included Vienna branches of Biomarkt, a popular organic supermarket chain.

German officials said on Thursday they suspected cucumbers imported from Spain were the possible source of the outbreak.

Smaller numbers of cases have been reported in Austria, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain, and all of the cases have been linked with travel to Germany.

Lockheed says thwarted "tenacious" cyber attack

Lockheed Martin Corp, the U.S. government's top information technology provider, said on Saturday that it detected and thwarted "a significant and tenacious attack" on its information systems network one week ago.

"As a result of the swift and deliberate actions taken to protect the network and increase IT security, our systems remain secure," Jennifer Whitlow, a Lockheed spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. "No customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised."

Lockheed's information security personnel are working around the clock to restore employee access to the "information systems network" targeted in the May 21 attack, the statement said.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by sales and the world's largest aerospace company, has kept the "appropriate U.S. government agencies" informed of its actions, it added.

Vettel wins crash-hit Monaco Grand Prix

Red Bull's Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel won a crash-hit Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday for his fifth victory in six races this season.

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was runner-up, the Spaniard crossing the line 1.1 seconds behind the German, with McLaren's Jenson Button third in a race halted for 21 minutes by a pile-up on the 71st of the 78 laps.

EXCLUSIVE - Hackers breached U.S. defense contractors

Unknown hackers have broken into the security networks of Lockheed Martin Corp and several other U.S. military contractors, a source with direct knowledge of the attacks told Reuters.

They breached security systems designed to keep out intruders by creating duplicates to "SecurID" electronic keys from EMC Corp's RSA security division, said the person who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

It was not immediately clear what kind of data, if any, was stolen by the hackers. But Lockheed's and other military contractor networks house sensitive data on future weapons systems as well as military technology currently used in battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They are the latest companies to be breached through sophisticated attacks that have pierced the defenses of huge corporations including Sony, Google Inc and EMC Corp. Security experts say that it is virtually impossible for any company or government agency to build a security network that hackers will be unable to pierce.

The Pentagon, which has about 85,000 military personnel and civilians working on cybersecurity issues worldwide, said it also uses a limited number of the RSA security keys, but declined to say how many for security reasons.

The hackers learned how to copy those electronic keys with data stolen from RSA during a sophisticated attack that EMC disclosed in March, according to the source.

EMC declined to comment on the matter, as did executives at major defense contractors.

Lockheed, which employs 126,000 people worldwide and had $45.8 billion in revenue last year, said it does not discuss specific threats or responses as a matter of principle, but regularly took actions to counter threats and ensure security.

Many defense companies, including General Dynamics Corp, use the "SecurID" tokens.

Executives at General Dynamics, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, Raytheon Co and other defense companies declined to comment on any security breaches.

"We do not comment on whether or not Northrop Grumman is or has been a target for cyber intrusions," said Northrop spokesman Randy Belote.

SECURIDS

Raytheon spokesman Jonathan Kasle said his company took immediate companywide actions in March when incident information was initially provided to RSA customers.

"As a result of these actions, we prevented a widespread disruption of our network," he said.

Boeing spokesman Todd Kelley said his company had a "wide range" of systems in place to detect and prevent intrusions of its networks. "We have a robust computing security team that constantly monitors our network," he said.

SecurIDs are widely used electronic keys to computer systems that work using a two-pronged approach to confirming the identity of the person trying to access a computer system. They are designed to thwart hackers who might use key-logging viruses to capture passwords by constantly generating new passwords to enter the system.

The SecurID generates new strings of digits on a minute-by-minute basis that the user must enter along with a secret PIN before they can access the network. If the user fails to enter the string before it expires, then access is denied.

EMC disclosed in March that hackers had broken into its network and stolen some information related to its SecurIDs. It said the information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of those devices in securing customer networks.

EMC said it worked with the Department of Homeland Security to publish a note on the March attack and provided Web addresses to help companies identify where the attack might have come from.

It briefed individual customers on how to secure their systems. In a bid to ensure secrecy, the company required them to sign nondisclosure agreements promising not to discuss the advice that it provided in those sessions, according .

Google takes wraps off pay-by-phone system

Google Inc and four bank and telecommunications partners on Thursday unveiled "Google Wallet," taking U.S. shoppers a step closer to paying by waving their mobile phones at the checkout counter.

The Internet search company's system that lets people pay with phones instead of cards, hoping to win a race against major rivals including Visa, top U.S. banks and mobile phone companies.

Google, Mastercard, Citigroup, First Data and Sprint will make the service available this summer to people in New York and San Francisco, Google and its partners said on Thursday.

Designed to work as an app on Android phones, it hitches a ride on MasterCard's "PayPass" technology, which lets shoppers tap cards for payment. Google has signed up retailers including Macy's Inc, American Eagle Outfitters Inc and Subway to blend the service with loyalty programs and discount offers.

Shoppers abroad, especially in Asia, can pay for things by waving their phones at check-out. An estimated one-fifth of people in Japan are signed up for mobile payments. In the United States, mobile wallets still face hurdles, but since last year, some large companies have raced to make the technology a reality.

Citigroup Mastercard holders with PayPass-enabled cards will get first crack at Google's service. The Internet giant also plans to sell a virtual prepaid card.

Visa Inc has tested a pay-by-phone system with several large banks, including Bank of America Corp and Wells Fargo & Co. The world's largest credit and debit card processing network has said it plans to make its mobile payments system commercially available this year.

Zuckerberg says not opening Facebook to under-13s

Facebook is not working on opening up the world's biggest social network to children under the age of 13 in the short term, founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday, contradicting some media reports.

Facebook, which has more than half a billion active users, operates policies around the world not to register children under a certain age. The age varies by country but is typically around 13.

"We're not trying to work on the ability for people under the age of 13 to sign up," Zuckerberg said when asked about the issue at the e-G8 Internet forum in Paris on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg said comments he had made at a conference last week at an education conference, when he said regulations made it difficult for children to sign up for Facebook, had been taken out of context.

He said the complexity of protecting children online meant the question was not a priority for the company.

"That's just not top of the list of things for us to figure out right now," said Zuckerberg. "Some time in the future, I think it makes sense to explore that, but we're not working on it right now."

Zuckerberg began the on-stage interview by batting away a question about Facebook's plans to go public with the answer: "Not yet". The company is expected to offer its shares to the public next year.

Facebook is expected to generate roughly $4 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, up from $1.86 billion a year earlier, according to market research firm eMarketer.

Its value has been estimated at up to $90 billion, based on private transactions on the secondary market.

Zuckerberg also played down the role his social network had played in revolutions that have rocked countries from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya.

"It's not a Facebook thing, it's an Internet thing," he said when asked about Facebook's part in the so-called Arab Spring. "I think Facebook was neither necessary nor sufficient for any of those things to happen."

"If it weren't Facebook, it would be something else."

Millions of users in the Middle East have used Facebook and Twitter to organise protests in recent months.

Europe on alert for Icelandic volcano ash cloud

An eruption by Iceland's most active volcano put Europe on high alert on Monday as a billowing ash cloud drifted toward Scotland and threatened to shut down airports across the northern edge of the continent.

Northern Europe's fringe was affected first, though experts saw little chance of a repeat of last year's six-day travel chaos caused by the eruption of another Icelandic volcano.

People living next to the glacier where the Grimsvotn volcano burst into life on Saturday were most affected, with ash shutting out the daylight and smothering buildings and vehicles.

An Icelandic Met Official said ash from the volcano could touch northwest Scotland as early as Monday evening.

Europe's air traffic control organization has said that if volcanic emissions continued at the same rate then the cloud might reach west French airspace and north Spain on Thursday.

Authorities have backed more relaxed rules on flying through ash after being criticized for being too strict last time.

Then, closing European air space forced the cancellation of 100,000 flights, disrupted 10 million passengers and cost the industry an estimated $1.7 billion in lost revenues.

"I think the regulators are a bit more sensible than they were last year," Michael O'Leary, chief of budget airline Ryanair, told a conference call. "We would be cautiously optimistic that they won't balls it up again this year."

Nevertheless, airline shares fell between 3 to 5 percent.

German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer said he did not expect the eruption to disrupt air traffic to the same degree as last year, adding however there would be a flight ban for jet planes should particles from the ash cloud reach a higher concentration than 2 milligrammes per cubic meter.

Speaking to Sky News, British Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said authorities could hopefully work with airlines to "enable them to fly around concentrations of ash rather than having to impose a blanket closure."

Grimsvotn erupted on Saturday, with dark plumes of smoke shooting as high as 20 km (12 miles) into the sky.

The outburst is the volcano's most powerful since 1873 and stronger than the volcano which caused trouble last year, but scientists say the type of ash being spat out is less easily dispersed and winds have so far been more favorable.

"The difference in impact on aviation comes down to three factors: the ash being produced by the eruption, the weather patterns blowing the ash around, and new rules about planes flying into ash," University of Edinburgh volcanologist John Stevenson wrote on his blog.

SMOTHERED IN ASH

But some were expecting problems. "It's too early to tell if Europe will be affected. What's certain is that when it is affected, there will be flight cancellations," French Transport Minister Thierry Marianai told Europe 1radio.

Europe's air traffic control organization, which set up a crisis unit after bad coordination was blamed for worsening last year's crisis, said no closures outside Iceland were expected on Monday or Tuesday.

Airlines as far away as Australia were monitoring the cloud. Norway's civil aviation body said the one or two flights a day to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard would shut tonight. A small part of Greenland's eastern airspace was also closed.

Iceland's aviation authority said however it hoped it might be able to re-open the island's main airport by the evening as the tower of smoke above the volcano appeared to have fallen.

The Icelandic met office said the plume from Grimsvotn, which last exploded in 2004, had fallen to just below 10 km (6 miles), well below its maximum so far of 25 km.

The volcano lies under the Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland, the largest glacier in Europe. People living in districts close by have been smothered in ash.

"Yesterday between 2 and 3 (pm in the afternoon) it brightened up a bit until 8 in the evening, then it became black again," said Sigurlaugur Gislasson, 23, whose family owns a hotel near the town of Kirkjubaejarklaustur.

"It is like being in a sandstorm," he said. All the tourists who were staying at the hotel have also gone, he added.

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Stop the Scanners: Google halts efforts to digitize old newspapers

Google’s has long touted a grand vision of organizing the world’s information. But on Friday, the world’s No.1 Internet search engine acknowledged that not all of that information will make the cut.

The company has put the brakes on a three-year-old project to scan and digitize newspaper archives dating back to the 18^th century.

Google said that websurfers can continue to access its existing free online archive of newspapers – the company has digitized more than 3.5 million issues of more than 2,000 newspaper titles worldwide – but the company will no longer add to the collection by scanning old newspapers.

“We don’t plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives, and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing,” Google said in an emailed statement.

The news comes as Google undergoes its biggest management shift in a decade, with co-founder Larry Page replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO in April.

Interestingly, Page is considered to be a big proponent of ambitious “moonshot” projects, such as Google’s similar effort to scan the world’s out-of-print library books (an effort which is currently facing some legal difficulties).

But Google insiders have also said they expect Page to prune the vast number of projects underway at the company, so that Google can focus on the ones with the most promise. And there is increasing pressure from investors over Google’s free-spending ways.

It’s also worth nothing that Google has recently launched several products to help publishers make money from their digital content, such as the One Pass service for selling subscriptions to online magazines and newspapers and the recently-launched electronic bookstore Google eBooks.

Perhaps spending time and money to build a free library of old newsprint doesn’t deliver enough of a return on investment for the new Google.

Hackers hit Sony sites raising more security issues

Sony Corp has been hacked again, exposing more security issues for the company less than a month after intruders stole personal information from more than 100 million online user accounts.

A hacked page on a Sony website in Thailand directed users to a fake site posing as an Italian credit card company. The site was designed to steal information from customers, Internet security firm F-Secure disclosed on Friday.

It is the latest in a series of security headaches for Sony, which discovered in April hackers had broken into its PlayStation Network and stole data from more than 77 million accounts. On May 2, Sony disclosed hackers had also stolen data from about 25 million user accounts of the Sony Online Entertainment website, a PC-based games service.

The PlayStation attack, considered the biggest in Internet history, prompted the Japanese electronics giant to shut down its PlayStation Network and other services for close to a month.

"It's a Sony security issue," said Jennifer Kutz, a representative for F-Secure, referring to the fraudulent website.

The latest hacking, which the security company said occurred separately from the April attack, was reported just hours after Sony told customers of another breach on one of its units.

So-Net, the Internet service provider unit of Sony, alerted customers on Thursday that an intruder had broken into its system and stolen virtual points worth $1,225 from account holders.

Critics have slammed the company for not protecting its networks securely and then waiting up to a week before telling its customers of the attack and the possible theft of credit card information, prompting lawmakers and state attorneys general to launch investigations.

Security experts said they were not surprised that the electronics company has not yet fixed weaknesses in its massive global network. Earlier this week, Sony shut down one of its websites set up to help millions of users change their passwords after finding a security flaw.

"Sony is going through a pretty rigorous process and finding the holes to fill," said Josh Shaul, chief technology officer for computer security firm Application Security Inc.

"The hackers are going through the same process and they're putting their fingers in the holes faster than Sony can fill them."

"What we've done is stopped the So-Net points exchanges and told customers to change their passwords," So-Net said in a statement in Japanese to consumers.

About 100,000 yen ($1,225) was stolen from accounts that were attacked. The company said there was no evidence other accounts in the online system had been compromised.

"At this point in our investigations, we have not confirmed any data leakage. We have not found any sign of a possibility that a third party has obtained members' names, address, birth dates and phone numbers."

Security experts have told Reuters Sony's networks around the world remain vulnerable to attack.

Sony's string of security problems could be attracting more hackers to attack its networks.

"I think it's now 'I'm a hacker and I'm bored, let's go after Sony,'" Shaul said.

A Sony representative in the United States could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.

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Amazon says e-books now outselling paper books

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday that it now sells more digital e-books than paper books and that its recently introduced lower-priced Kindle e-reader is outselling other versions of the device.

Amazon, which does not divulge exact sales figures for the Kindle or e-books, said that for every 100 print books it has sold since April 1, it has sold 105 e-books. That includes both paperback and hardcover books, but excludes free downloads.

Last month, Amazon introduced a Kindle for $114, or $25 less than its next most expensive version, featuring advertising.

The Kindle has been fighting with Barnes & Noble Inc's Nook and Apple Inc's iPad for e-book sales. The Kindle was launched in 2007 and is by far the best-selling device made specifically for reading digital books.

Barnes & Noble is holding a press event on Tuesday in New York to unveil a new e-reader. Last month, Barnes & Noble introduced improvements to its Nook Color.

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Angry Birds, the next Mickey Mouse?

Mikael Hed is unrepentant about the 200 million minutes per day that people around the world fritter away playing Angry Birds, the iPhone game created by the company he heads.

"It's great. Think of all the other stuff they could be doing that's so much more boring," said the chief executive of Rovio Mobile, a Finnish start-up almost unheard of before it unleashed the addictive game on an unsuspecting world in 2009.

Angry Birds, the most popular paid-for game in the Apple (AAPL.O) App Store's four-year history, has just passed 200 million downloads.

The deceptively simple puzzle game in which players use a slingshot to fire birds at green pigs hiding in buildings has hooked a whole new audience, many of whom were never interested in video games before.

"These new touchscreen portable devices have changed the way that people behave. Nowadays, people have to be entertained all the time, whenever you have just a few moments spare," Hed told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris this week.

"Much of those 200 million minutes comes from this type of micro spare time, filling the little gaps."

Rovio plans to use its hold over of those millions of spare moments as a wedge to expand into Hollywood and possibly even Disney-style (DIS.N) theme parks.

"Believe it or not, we have had such suggestions, and I believe Angry Birds Land was actually the name they used."

"Whether there will be a theme park dedicated to Angry Birds or not, I don't know, but I would be surprised if within 10 years there wouldn't be at least a theme park with something related to Angry Birds in it," said Hed.

MICKEY MOUSE

For now, the next step is to build the birds' characters and flesh out the rather thin Angry Birds story, which is that the birds are attacking the pigs because the pigs stole their eggs.

Hed says there would be news in the next days relating to Rovio's media ambitions, but declined to elaborate.

Already, Rovio has teamed up with News Corp's (NWSA.O) 20th Century Fox to hitch a new game to the animated 3-D movie Rio, which has taken hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office around the world.

A clue to Angry Birds Rio even featured in 20th Century Fox's (NWSA.O) ad at this year's SuperBowl -- the year's highest-profile advertising spot in the United States.

Hed has held talks with Hollywood studios about an Angry Birds feature film but so far has not found the right partner or deal. He said he wants to proceed with caution to protect the brand, and sees Mickey Mouse as a brand to aspire to.

These may seem grand ambitions for a company with just one megahit to its name, and Rovio is under pressure to show it is not a one-hit wonder. Angry Birds was its 52nd game.

Rovio plans to cement the popularity of Angry Birds with a version for Facebook this summer -- which will add social aspects to the essentially solitary game by building in features for players to help one another.

Hed also says a new Angry Birds game and another, different type of game are in the works. But he seems relaxed about their likely success.

"At some point you get to a point where you no longer associate a brand with just one product," he says.

"While games will always be our strong area, I also believe that Angry Birds is already beyond that point. It has the critical mass where it doesn't really need the game in order to be very known."

Rovio has just raised $42 million in venture capital funding but is already thinking about going public in two to three years' time.

Hed says the company has had takeover approaches but has so far resisted. "We're having too much fun to be a part of something bigger. That said, people do crazy things when presented with obscene amounts of money."

Asked whether he has been offered such sums, he answers: "Well, we're still independent, so not obscene enough."