(Reuters) – A stunt double for Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has sued News Corp over allegations its British newspapers hacked her phone, the first lawsuit in the United States against the company since the scandal broke two years ago.

The lawsuit, filed on June 13 by professional stunt double Eunice Huthart, said reporters from News Corp’s tabloids The Sun and the defunct News of the World, hacked her mobile phone while she was working for Jolie on location in Los Angeles.

The allegations include stories that ran in the tabloids about Jolie’s budding relationship with actor Brad Pitt – when only a tight circle of people had knowledge of it – while they were filming the movie “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”

A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Huthart’s lawsuit said the hacking occurred in 2004 and 2005 while she was in the United States and Britain and resulted in lost voice messages that she never received. It said the London police have a file of Huthart’s phone logs demonstrating the times when representatives from News of the World called her mobile.

The missing voice mails provided information later used in news reports, according to the court document in U.S. District Court in California.

In one instance, Huthart was instructed to meet Jolie, who was checked into a hotel under the pseudonym “Pocahontas.” Huthart said she never received the message with the code name even though Jolie’s assistant said she left it for her on the phone.

The lawsuit said that the tabloids intercepted messages left by Jolie regarding her movie career. It cited a News of the World article with the headline “Pitt Stop for Jolie” that began “Hollywood babe Angelina Jolie has threatened to quit the movies for good,” according to the complaint.

Huthart of Liverpool, England, is godmother to one of Jolie’s children.

The phone hacking scandal sent shockwaves through the British establishment, forced the closure of the Sunday tabloid News of the World, prompted a huge police inquiry and lead to the arrest of more than 60 people.

But until the Huthart lawsuit, the scandal has been contained in Britain.

Huthart, who is seeking unspecified damages, is being represented by New York based attorneys Siegel Teitelbaum & Evans and Steven Hyman of McLaughlin & Stern as well as The Stein Law Firm in Los Angeles.

The New York law firms have ties to the British lawyer Mark Lewis, who represented the family of a murdered teenage girl, Milly Dowler. Two years ago, news broke that reporters from News of the World hacked the mobile phone of Dowler, provoking wide- spread outrage about the illicit news gathering practices of British tabloid journalists.

Last summer, Lewis teamed up with Norman Siegel of Siegel Teitelbaum & Evans and the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Steven Hyman of McLaughlin & Stern to pursue claims that four of his clients had been hacked by Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct tabloid on U.S. soil.

Siegel and Hyman have been pursuing their own inquiry into the possible hacking of 9/11 victims’ phones by News of the World.

News Corp is preparing to split its publishing assets, which includes its British newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and book publisher HarperCollins, from its cable networks and movie studio on June 28.

The case is Eunice Huthart v. News Corporation et al in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Western Division – Los Angeles) No. 13-04253

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Grant McCool, Bernard Orr)

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth.

A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world’s No. 1 social network.

Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the network.

While pinpointing how much money small advertisers spend only online is difficult, in total they spent approximately $32 billion during 2012 in the United States, according to market research firm eMarketer.

“Most small business owners start off as Facebook users, then migrate to become page owners, and from there migrate to become advertisers,” said Dan Levy, Facebook director of small business.

He said that Facebook does not plan to start charging businesses to set up pages.

Advertising accounts for 85 percent of Facebook’s revenue – which also includes dollars from the world’s largest brands and advertising agencies. But the company is trying to spark its ad growth following a sharp slowdown last year.

Last quarter, Facebook reported first-quarter revenue of $1.46 billion. Advertising revenue rose 43 percent, the fastest growth rate since the end of 2011.

Facebook declined to break out how much ad revenue comes from small businesses and did not indicate how long it took to reach the 1 million milestone.

It has introduced several initiatives to help boost growth, including an overhaul of its newsfeed and changes to how advertisers buy ads on the network in order to simplify the process.

Small business owners are “critical” to Facebook’s success, said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group.

“Once they launched new ad products targeted to small businesses in the middle of last year, they were able to significantly accelerate their revenue growth,” he said.

Kim Caulfield, a small business owner in Orange County, California who sells custom jewelry made from horse tail hair, started using Facebook advertising to reach more customers for her company Tail Spin.

“You only can invite so many of your friends over and most of them don’t own horses,” she said.

She now spends approximately $25 a day with Facebook on advertisements directed to horse enthusiasts with the potential of reaching over 5 million people.

Facebook also reaches out to local businesses order to help them through the process. Dallas-area clothing boutique owner Lucy Huang said she was part of a Facebook incubator program to mentor businesses and walk them through the ad buying process.

Huang said she spends roughly $50 a month advertising Accents retail stores with Facebook, saying it is cheaper and more effective than print or online rivals like Yelp.

More than 50 percent of small business owners use Facebook pages to promote their products, but only 16 percent use Facebook ads, according to BIA Kelsey, a research firm specializing in local advertising.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

A vast majority of those advertisers are small business
owners who have flocked to the world’s No. 1 social network.

Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small
advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from
jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the
network.

While pinpointing how much money small advertisers spend
only online is difficult, in total they spent approximately $32
billion during 2012 in the United States, according to market
research firm eMarketer.

“Most small business owners start off as Facebook users,
then migrate to become page owners, and from there migrate to
become advertisers,” said Dan Levy, Facebook director of small
business.

He said that Facebook does not plan to start charging
businesses to set up pages.

Advertising accounts for 85 percent of Facebook’s revenue -
which also includes dollars from the world’s largest brands and
advertising agencies. But the company is trying to spark its ad
growth following a sharp slowdown last year.

Last quarter, Facebook reported first-quarter revenue of
$1.46 billion. Advertising revenue rose 43 percent, the fastest
growth rate since the end of 2011.

Facebook declined to break out how much ad revenue comes
from small businesses and did not indicate how long it took to
reach the 1 million milestone.

It has introduced several initiatives to help boost growth,
including an overhaul of its newsfeed and changes to how
advertisers buy ads on the network in order to simplify the
process.

Small business owners are “critical” to Facebook’s success,
said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group.

“Once they launched new ad products targeted to small
businesses in the middle of last year, they were able to
significantly accelerate their revenue growth,” he said.

Kim Caulfield, a small business owner in Orange County,
California who sells custom jewelry made from horse tail hair,
started using Facebook advertising to reach more customers for
her company Tail Spin.

“You only can invite so many of your friends over and most
of them don’t own horses,” she said.

She now spends approximately $25 a day with Facebook on
advertisements directed to horse enthusiasts with the potential
of reaching over 5 million people.

Facebook also reaches out to local businesses order to help
them through the process. Dallas-area clothing boutique owner
Lucy Huang said she was part of a Facebook incubator program to
mentor businesses and walk them through the ad buying process.

Huang said she spends roughly $50 a month advertising
Accents retail stores with Facebook, saying it is cheaper and
more effective than print or online rivals like Yelp.

More than 50 percent of small business owners use Facebook
pages to promote their products, but only 16 percent use
Facebook ads, according to BIA Kelsey, a research firm
specializing in local advertising.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Nick
Zieminski)

(Reuters) – International Business Machines said on Tuesday it would acquire Web hosting company SoftLayer Technologies and create a new division for clients interested in so-called cloud services, a move to better compete with larger rivals in the space.

Executives with IBM and SoftLayer declined to comment on the terms of the deal on a call with reporters.

Reuters reported in March that IBM, among others, had been in talks to buy SoftLayer in a deal that could fetch more than $2 billion.

Dallas-based SoftLayer, which leases online storage space to companies, was founded in 2005 and has become what it says is the world’s largest privately held website hosting service. The company provides its 25,000 customers, including AT&T Inc and Citrix Systems Inc, with cloud infrastructure.

The company competes with Amazon.com Inc’s Web services business and Rackspace Hosting Inc.

Like rivals Hewlett Packard Co and Microsoft Corp, IBM has increasingly invested in cloud services as corporate users move away from costly internal information technology infrastructure.

IBM has traditionally specialized in assisting large corporate and government users but has been trying in recent years to expand into smaller businesses.

AIMING BIG

But Erich Clementi, senior vice president of IBM Global Technology Services, said on a call with reporters that IBM is shooting squarely for the large business segment with this acquisition.

“We are the largest infrastructure provider to the enterprise world on the planet,” he said “That is our focus.”

Over the last few years, Web hosting companies have been considered attractive takeover candidates as technology and telecom companies look to improve the performance and cost efficiencies of their cloud computing services for businesses.

Wells Fargo analyst Gray Powell estimated that the transaction was worth 11.1 times SoftLayer’s projected 2013 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

That compares with Rackspace, which is currently trading at 11 times 2013 estimated EBITDA, Powell noted.

IBM said it expected to gain $7 billion annually in revenue from cloud services by the end of 2015. It created a new division called Cloud Services, which will combine SoftLayer and IBM’s existing offerings into a global platform.

SoftLayer is majority held by GI Partners, which purchased all of the equity in partnership with the company’s management in August 2010.

Data storage equipment maker EMC had been approached about SoftLayer as well. An EMC spokesman said on Tuesday, “EMC was initially approached, uninterested and decided not to bid.”

IBM said it expected the deal to close in the third quarter.

Shares of IBM were down about 1 percent at $206.78.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Carol Bishopric)

(Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch tried to convince Wall Street on Tuesday that there is still money to be made in newspapers, reminding investors that he had defied skeptics over the past 60 years to build one of the world’s biggest media empires.

As News Corp prepares to separate its publishing business from its entertainment assets, Murdoch said that while some brands face individual challenges, as a whole the publishing portfolio is “undervalued and underdeveloped.”

“I am not saying I didn’t make many mistakes along the way —even some spectacular ones,” Murdoch said at a meeting in Manhattan to sell investors on the new publishing company.

“You may be wondering why I want to do it all over again,” the 82-year-old media mogul said. “The simple answer is: there is opportunity everywhere.”

The new publishing company, which will retain the News Corp name, officially kicks off on June 28 with properties such as: The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, The Times of London, Australian pay-TV services, book publisher HarperCollins and fledgling education unit, Amplify.

The spin-off comes as newspapers face plunging advertising revenue and readers who increasingly prefer to get news for free on their smartphones and tablets. Shares of newspaper companies – once considered blue-chip investments – have tumbled over the past decade as investors fear a permanent drain in ad sales.

Against this backdrop, the publishing company’s new chief executive, Robert Thomson, said there will be “relentless” cost cuts in store for the business. He gave no specifics.

News Corp executives took pains to note almost half of the publishing company’s revenue comes from sources other than advertising. One revenue source is Dow Jones, which sells news and information to financial institutions and competes with Thomson Reuters Corp and Bloomberg LP.

Dow Jones CEO Lex Fenwick highlighted the introduction of a new platform, code-named DJ X. He emphasized one product, one price and one standard contract.

“If we can take a little more of institutional spend with DJ X – if we deliver that product with real value, there’s a real opportunity to increase our market share,” he said.

Fenwick also said Dow Jones is working on a messaging platform to compete with Bloomberg’s vaunted product.

CLEAN BALANCE SHEET

Thomson, a close confident of Murdoch, ensured the new publishing company would start out with a clean balance sheet, no debt and $2 billion in cash to buffer operations and attract investors. News Corp intends to pay a dividend, but the board has yet to determine the details.

News Corp said last Friday that it would write down the value of its Australian and U.S. publishing assets by up to $1.4 billion, potentially wiping out the company’s estimated profit for the quarter ending June 30.

Thomson said the company will have “a permanent start-up sensibility.” He added, “We will be relentless in our cost-cutting and in our pursuit of profits.”

The new News Corp also unveiled its logo – written in a cursive script based on the handwriting of Murdoch and his father, Keith, whose Australian newspapers were the seeds of the media empire.

The Fox network, the movie studio and a set of lucrative cable properties will become a separately traded company called 21st Century Fox.

“I have been given an extraordinary opportunity most people never get in their lifetime: the chance to do it all over again,” said Murdoch.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Tiffany Wu)

(Reuters) – News Corp said on Friday it will write down the value of its Australian and U.S. publishing assets by up to $1.4 billion, as the company prepares to split its business between its newspaper and entertainment operations.

The company said the goodwill impairment charge was primarily for its Australia newspapers though it gave no more details. It also said it expected reduced cash flows in the future.

The charge will be taken in the quarter ending June 30 and could effectively wipe out News Corp’s profit. Analysts were expecting News Corp to report a pretax profit of $1.4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Earlier on Friday, News Corp said its board authorized a $500 million stock repurchase program for the publishing operation, partially answering the question of how the new News Corp will use $2.6 billion in cash it will have when the spinoff takes place, expected to occur on June 28.

News Corp is preparing to hive off its publishing assets as newspapers around the world face unprecedented challenges because of plunging advertising revenue and readers who increasingly prefer to read news on smartphones and tablets.

News Corp publishes 140 newspapers in Australia including The Australian. Its U.S. assets include the New York Post, Dow Jones’ The Wall Street Journal and the coupon insert company News America Marketing and the book publisher HarperCollins.

The company had warned for several quarters that its Australian newspapers were facing punishing declines in advertising revenue.

Gabelli & Co analyst Brett Harriss forecast before the news of the goodwill charge that the newspapers in Australia have an estimated value of $1.8 billion, while Dow Jones’s value is estimated at $1.5 billion.

Last quarter, News Corp reported a 35 percent drop in operating income for its publishing division because of lower advertising sales at its Australian newspaper.

In 2008, News Corp took a $2.8 billion non-cash charge on its purchase of Dow Jones.

POISON PILL DEFENSE

The board formally approved that current News Corp stakeholders will receive one share in the new publishing company – that will retain the News Corp name – for every four shares of the existing company they hold.

They will remain shareholders in the entertainment assets under the 21st Century Fox name, including the Fox broadcasting network, movie studio and lucrative equity stakes in pay-TV providers.

To prevent hostile takeovers, News Corp put in place a poison pill provision for one year after the split. It will be triggered if someone acquires more than 15 percent of the stock of either company.

News Corp has a history of potential takeovers. In 2004, Liberty Media Corp’s John Malone had quietly snapped up a 20 percent voting stake in the company. The move prompted Murdoch to swap his stake in DirecTV and other assets for Malone’s shares in News Corp.

The new News Corp will be an independent publicly traded company and 21st Century Fox will retain no ownership interest in News Corp, the company said.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Chief Executive Officer Robert Thomson will give more details about the company at an investor day conference on May 28.

The company named current directors Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch to the board of the new News Corp. New additions to the board include Thomson; Ana Paula Pessoa, a partner at Brunswick Group; John Elkann, head of Exor SpA; and Masroor Siddiqui, head of investment firm Naya Management.

At 21st Century Fox, new board directors include Delphine Arnault, deputy general manager at Christian Dior Couture; Jacques Nasser of One Equity Partners; and Robert Silberman, executive chairman of Strayer Education Inc.

Rupert Murdoch will be chief executive of 21st Century Fox and chairman of both companies.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Lisa Von Ahn and Tim Dobbyn)

The board of the publishing business, which will retain the
News Corp name, authorized a $500 million stock repurchase
program, the company said on Friday.

The stock repurchase may shed light for analysts and
investors who want to know how the new News Corp will use the
$2.6 billion in cash it will have when the spinoff takes place.
That is expected to occur on June 28..

Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Chief Executive Officer Robert
Thomson will give more details about the company at a conference
on May 28.

The board of the existing News Corp has now formally
approved the split-up of the company’s publishing business from
its entertainment operations. Current News Corp stakeholders who
own four shares of Class A or Class B common stock will receive
one share of new News Corp’s Class A or Class B common stock.

To prevent hostile takeovers, News Corp put in place a
poison pill provision for one year after the split. It will be
triggered if someone acquires more than 15 percent of the stock
of either company.

News Corp has a history of potential takeovers. In 2004,
Liberty Media Corp’s John Malone had quietly snapped up
a 20 percent voting stake in the company. The move prompted
Murdoch to swap his stake in DirecTV and other assets
for Malone’s shares in News Corp.

The new News Corp will be an independent publicly traded
company.

The entertainment assets, including Fox broadcasting
network, movie studio and lucrative equity stakes in pay-TV
providers, will be known as 21st Century Fox.

21st Century Fox will retain no ownership interest in News
Corp, the company said.

The publishing spinoff includes News Corp’s newspapers
including The Wall Street Journal and The Times in London, a
cable network and pay-TV provider in Australia, book publisher
HarperCollins and fledgling education company, Amplify.

The company named current directors Lachlan Murdoch and
James Murdoch to the board of the new News Corp. New additions
to the board include Thomson; Ana Paula Pessoa, a partner at
Brunswick Group; John Elkann, head of Exor SpA ; and
Masroor Siddiqui, head of investment firm Naya Management.

At 21st Century Fox, new board directors include Delphine
Arnault, deputy general manager at Christian Dior Couture;
Jacques Nasser of One Equity Partners; and Robert Silberman,
executive chairman of Strayer Education Inc.

Rupert Murdoch will be CEO of 21st Century Fox and chairman
of both companies.

Shares of News Corp were up 0.8 percent at $33.13.

Mobile revenue on a non-GAAP basis nearly doubled in the
quarter to $83.9 million.

“The mobile cap they put in place appears to working – it’s
driving lower content costs and additional subscribers,” said
Aaron Kessler, an analyst with Raymond James.

Pandora shares jumped 9 percent in extended trading after
closing at $17.16 on Thursday.

Pandora, whose revenue comes mainly from advertisers,
introduced a cap of 40 hours for free listeners on mobile
devices. Subscription is required beyond that limit.

Mobile is an important revenue source for Pandora as more
people choose to listen to music on smartphones.

Likewise, Pandora is facing an army of competitors ranging
from Spotify to Sirius XM Radio Inc to Google Inc
, which launched a subscription music service earlier
this month.

The other challenge facing the decade old company is the
rising cost of licensing music, which grows as more people tune
in. The company has about 70 million active listeners, up 35
percent year-over-year.

Content acquisition costs were 66 percent of total revenue
for the quarter compared with 69 percent for the same quarter a
year ago.

Pandora is looking for a new chief executive to replace Joe
Kennedy, who announced he would be stepping down in March.
Kennedy is still serving as CEO and said the search was
progressing but did not give a timeline.

“I’m 100 percent engaged in the role,” he said in an
interview with Reuters.

The company raised its non-GAAP revenue forecast for the
year in the range of $615 million to $635 million from a
previous range of $600 million to $620 million.

Pandora had a net loss of $28.5 million, or 16 cents per
share, compared with a loss of $20.2 million, or 12 cents per
share, in the year-ago period.

Adjusted for items, Pandora posted a loss of 10 cents per
share that matched analysts’ average estimates, according to
Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Non-GAAP revenue of $128.5 million includes $3 million
related to the mobile subscription service. Analysts had
expected $124 million.

The deal, announced on Monday, is a bold bet by Yahoo Chief
Executive Marissa Mayer to revitalize the company by co-opting a
Web property with strong visitor traffic but little revenue.

The acquisition, which will use up about a fifth of Yahoo’s
$5.4 billion in cash and marketable securities, is the largest
by far since Mayer took the reins in July with the goal of
reversing a long decline in Yahoo’s business and Web traffic.

Analysts said Yahoo appeared to be overpaying for a business
that might not contribute to revenue for years, but that it had
to do something to plug a hole in its social media efforts.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney called it a
“long-shot/long-term investment” but one that fits into Mayer’s
turnaround strategy.

“(Yahoo’s) fundamentals have been subpar for numerous years,
in part because of the company’s missing presence in Social and
Mobile. Tumblr may help (Yahoo) develop that presence,” Mahaney
said in a note.

Tumblr is one of the Web’s most popular hubs of so-called
user-generated content. The deal will help Yahoo reach a younger
generation of users less tied to traditional Web portal and
email services.

Though Yahoo remains one of the Web’s most popular
destinations, it has seen its revenue shrink in recent years as
consumers and advertisers favor rivals such as Google Inc
and Facebook Inc. The deal is expected to
increase Yahoo’s audience by 50 percent.

Yahoo made clear it was sensitive to concerns that it might
somehow damage Tumblr by making it less irreverent or more
corporate.

“Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up,
Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,”
Yahoo said in a statement.

RICH PREMIUM

Media reports have pegged Tumblr’s 2012 revenue at $13
million. The privately held company, based in Manhattan, does
not disclose its financial results.

“Even if revenue was $100 million, it means Yahoo paid 10
times revenue,” said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. “Ten
times is what you pay to date the belle of the ball. It’s on the
outer bands of M&A.”

Yahoo could quickly boost Tumblr’s revenue by combining the
website with its own sales force, said Pivotal Research Group
analyst Brian Wieser. But loading Tumblr up with banner ads
risks alienating its users and probably wouldn’t provide a
significant lift to Yahoo’s overall revenue, he said.

“It’s not clear that this deal will be favorable from a
return-on-capital perspective,” Wieser said. “One billion
(dollars) for one company is a big bet.”

Gillis and Wieser were contacted on Sunday after the deal
was reported by the online publication All Things D.

Mayer, on a conference call with analysts on Monday,
described the Tumblr deal as an exception and said Yahoo was not
necessarily planning to make lots of similarly sized deals.

Shares of Yahoo rose in early trading on Monday but quickly
gave up those gains and were little changed at $26.54. Through
Friday’s close, they had risen 70 percent since Mayer became
CEO.

IMAGE ISSUES

One question Yahoo may have to address is Tumblr’s
reputation as a home for pornographic blogs. At one point in
2009, about 80 percent of Tumblr’s top sites had something to do
with adult content. Today that number is closer to 5 percent,
according to Quantcast data, but the perception remains.

Dealing with that issue may fall to David Karp, 26, who
founded Tumblr in 2007 and will remain CEO.

Karp, a self-taught programmer who left high school in favor
of home schooling, did not take part in Mayer’s conference call.
Media reports have suggested his take in the billion-dollar sale
would top $200 million.

In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Karp seemed to be
less interested in money than in Tumblr’s prominence.

“There are a lot of rich people in the world. There are very
few people who have the privilege of getting to invent things
that billions of people use,” he said.

The Syrian Electronic Army, an online group that supports
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was behind the incident which
followed a phishing attack on the company’s email accounts, FT
reported on its website.

The attack is the latest in which hackers commandeered the
Twitter account of a prominent news organization to push their
agenda. Twitter’s 200 million users worldwide send out more than
400 million tweets a day, making it a potent distributor of
news.

“Twitter has become a big enough media outlet that they
should provide better security for high-value accounts like the
Associated Press, the FT and others,” said Mikko Hypponen, chief
research officer with security software maker F-Secure.

Several attempts to reach Twitter for comment were
unsuccessful. The company’s media relations team made no mention
of the attack on its own Twitter feed.

Last month, the Syrian Electronic Army took control of the
Associated Press’ official Twitter feed and sent out a bogus
message that two explosions at the While House injured President
Obama. The false tweet triggered a brief but steep sell-off in
the U.S. financial markets.

That followed a spate of attacks in the past year by the
group on Twitter accounts of other media organizations,
including the BBC, National Public Radio, CBS, Reuters News and
the satirical news website The Onion.

Over the past few years security experts have become
increasingly vocal in calling for Twitter to introduce an
additional safety measure, a two-step process to log in, that
would help reduce breaches.

This type of authentication has long been used by
governments and big corporations and in recent years some
consumer Internet companies like Facebook Inc, Google Inc
and Microsoft Corp have embraced it.

“You can get two-factor authentication for World of
Warcraft, but you can’t get it for Twitter. Go figure,” Hypponen
said, referring to the popular video game.

EXECUTION VIDEOS

In Friday’s hacking of the FT, the Syrian Electronic Army -
which regularly targets media organizations it sees as
sympathetic to Syria’s rebels – posted links on the newspaper’s
Twitter feed to YouTube.

The video purports to show members of the al Qaeda-linked
Nusra Front Syrian rebel group executing blindfolded and
kneeling members of the Syrian army.

The video could not be independently verified.

“Today various FT Twitter accounts and one FT blog (not more
as previously stated) were compromised by hackers. We have now
secured those accounts are working to resolve the issue as
quickly as possible,” the FT, owned by Pearson Plc,
said in an updated statement.

Stories on the FT’s website had their headlines replaced by
“Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army” and messages on its Twitter
feed read: “Do you want to know the reality of the Syrian
‘Rebels?’” followed by a link to the video.

The FT’s feeds dedicated to technology and commodities were
among those affected.

Also on Friday, the Kyodo news agency reported that Yahoo
Japan suspects up to 22 million of its 200 million user IDs may
have been leaked. Kyodo said Yahoo Japan also detected an
unauthorized attempt to access the administrative systems of its
web portal.