Reuters - Facebook and the state of Washington sued a company on Thursday they accused of a practice called "clickjacking" that fools users of the world's top social network into visiting advertising sites, divulging personal information and spreading the scam to friends.

Digital Trends - Cybercrime prevention solution provider ThreatMetrix has released their assessment of the risk levels associated with online commerce transactions during the 2011 holiday season, and finds on average mobile transactions were less risky overall than transactions conducted from desktop (or notebook) computers. From businesses’ point of view, this means that mobile transactions might be less chancy than traditional online sales; for consumers, it might mean that businesses increasingly try to shift online purchasing to mobile platforms as a way to reduce their risk.

Reuters - Australian regulators have fined Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker by volume, A$55,000 ($58,000) for spamming customers and said the Finnish company should change its text message (SMS) marketing.

Digital Trends - Security software is an everyday necessity for most people, especially Windows users, businesses, and enterprises. But one of the ironies of security software is that, once in a while, it turns out to be the source of security problems all by itself. The latest instance involves McAfee’s SaaS Total Protection suite, a cloud-based solution designed to provide comprehensive email and and Web filtering along with centralized security management for businesses and organizations. However, McAfee has just had to issue an update to the service to block a flaw that could let attackers execute code on protected machines, and to fix another problem that could potentially enable attackers to turn protected systems into spam relays.

Reuters - Anti-virus software maker McAfee warned that a flaw in one of its products could make customers' PCs vulnerable to attacks in which hackers used their computers to distribute spam.

Reuters - One of the most common sources of computer intrusions has stopped infecting new machines after security researchers working with Facebook released the names of five suspected ringleaders.

Reuters - U.S. authorities on Tuesday unsealed criminal charges accusing a father and son team, both Russian citizens, of hacking into U.S. bank accounts and illegally snatching credit card numbers and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Digital Trends - Google has launched a new “Good to Know” campaign, offering simple tips on how users can maintain their online security and privacy and stay safe while they’re using Google services as well as the Internet in general. The Good to Know campaign spans both the online and traditional media world: Google has put up a website with its tips, but will also be running ads in newspapers and buying sign space in places like New York City. The idea is to educate even non-technical users on the basics of cyber-security, so they’re less likely to become victims of online scams, account hijacking, or other forms of fraud.

Reuters - Symantec Corp said a 2006 breach led to the theft of the source code to its flagship Norton security software, reversing its previous position that it had not been hacked.

AP - Google is focusing on the importance of protecting personal information in an unusual marketing campaign for a company that has been blasted for its own online privacy lapses and practices.

Reuters - Hackers disrupted online access to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, El Al Airlines and three banks on Monday in what the government described as a cyber-offensive against Israel.

Reuters - A hacker who goes by the name of "Yama Tough" threatened Saturday to release next week the full source code for Symantec Corp's flagship Norton Antivirus software.

Mashable - As hacks go, Zappos's attack over the past weekend could have been a lot worse. If you're one of the estimated 24 million affected Zappos or 6PM.com (an affiliate site) customers, you can take solace in the fact that only the last four digits of your credit card number have been compromised. Likewise, as Zappos CEO Tony Hseih explained in an email to customers on Sunday, hackers stole a cryptographically scrambled version of users' passwords, not the actual password.

Digital Trends - Yesterday brought some good news for opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and other in-process legislation intended for use as a weapon against cyber-criminals. The official online voice of the White House ran a lengthy blog post detailing “what the Administration will support—and what we will not support” if/when bills like SOPA and PIPA pass through Congress and land on President Barack Obama’s Oval Office desk.

AP - The computer networks of a San Francisco community college have been infected with software viruses that illegally transmitted personal data from students and employees overseas, school officials said Friday.

Digital Trends - A new variant in the long-standing Sykipot malware family appears to have a new trick up its sleeve. According to AlienVault, instead of just launching spear-phishing email messages, the new Sykipot variant now appears to be targeting credentials of the PC/SC x509 smart cards used by the U.S. Department of Defense and a wide range of corporations and enterprises, including defense contractors.

Digital Trends - Remember when GoDaddy stood firm on its support for the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)? That’s all in the past now, as apparently the company has officially announced a position change on Friday.

Digital Trends - In an effort to measure the online scam susceptibility, a new survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by PC Tools finds Americans consumers are astonishingly willing to give up their personal information when lured with free offers, with some 55 percent of American respondents indicating they would likely provide personal information online to redeem a prize after completing a survey. Response rates for other test scenarios weren’t much better: 53 percent said they’d likely hand over personal details for free antivirus software or a get-rich-quick opportunity, while just under half said they would turn over info for a free movie or online shopping registration.

The Atlantic Wire - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) put out an open call for developers to help them figure out how the controversial, smartphone-spying Carrier IQ software actually works. For a lot of privacy advocates, the big question is whether or not the diagnostic software is overstepping ethical bounds and potentially even breaking federal wire-tapping laws by collecting user data and selling it to mobile carriers. EFF is a non-profit devoted to "defending your rights in a digital world," to borrow the wording of its tagline, so the project aims to answer that question for the public good. The way to do this, the organization says, is by reverse-engineering the software in order to create a bunch of user profiles that data and legal experts can analyze. EFF's Peter Kearsley describes the goal in a blog post. "Profiles contain instructions about what data to collect, how to aggregate it, and where to send it," explains Kearsley. "To create transparency for the public that has been monitored by the more intrusive variants of this software, we will need a comprehensive library of these Profiles, and to know which ones were pushed to which phones at what times."