Hacked | featured news

Closing Britain's highest-selling newspaper, the 168-year-old News of the World, with just three days' notice in the wake of its phone-hacking scandal may feel like a nuclear option. In practice, it makes perfect commercial sense for Rupert Mudoch's News Corporation.

The News of the World, the British tabloid newspaper beset with a widening phone-hacking scandal, will shut down as result of the imbroglio, a top executive of its parent company said Thursday. The News, a feisty, hugely profitable daily that has been continuously published for 168 years, will cease publishing on Sunday, said James Murdoch, the son of media baron Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns the newspaper.

Car maker Ford has suspended advertising in Britain's News of the World due to allegations of hacking by the newspaper, while lender Halifax joined a growing band of companies reviewing their policies.

Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday condemned the alleged hacking of a slain teenage girl’s cell phone by a British tabloid. Nearly all of Britain’s papers reported Tuesday — citing unnamed sources — that a private investigator hacked into the cellphone of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002 after she was reported missing. The investigator reportedly worked for News of the World, Britain’s biggest-selling Sunday tabloid.

A computer hacking group Friday posted a new batch of personal details about Arizona law enforcement officers, marking a third attack on the state's police and an escalation of a spree of cyber break-ins.

Personal details about Tony Blair that appear online were apparently not hacked from the former British prime minister's computer systems, but from the email account of a former staffer.

Electronic Arts said a cyberattack on its BioWare division allowed hackers to steal names, encrypted passwords, email addresses and birth dates.

Japanese video game developer Sega Corp said on Sunday that information belonging to 1.3 million customers has been stolen from its database, the latest in a rash of global cyber attacks against video game companies.

Video game developer Sega said that its online database has been hacked, making it the latest in a string of games companies to be attacked.

Citigroup Inc said a cyber attack in May affected over 360,000 of its customers, or almost twice the initial number that the bank's figures had suggested. After a week of being pressured over its delayed disclosure of the data breach, the third largest U.S. bank by assets revealed more details in a statement late on Wednesday.