Chris Brook

Microsoft yesterday announced its intent to implement its “Do Not Track” (DNT) functionality by default in the next iteration of its web browser, Internet Explorer 10, a shift that has already begun to ruffle the feathers of online advertisers.

Officials at the University of Nebraska suspect a current undergraduate student is behind a hack earlier this month that appears to have spilled the sensitive information of tens of thousands of past and present students.

Serco Inc., a well-known contractor working with the U.S. government, announced that it was the target of a sophisticated attack that exposed data on 123,000 civil employees of the Federal government and their families, including names, addresses and social security numbers taken from the company’s system.

While there are an increasing number of weekends catered to hacking, even hackers need a day off – and it shouldn’t surprise many that increasingly, that day is usually Sunday. Network security company FireEye reviewed statistics on email-based attacks for 2012 that suggest that Sunday has slowed into a “day of rest” for hackers.

VIEW SLIDESHOW Fair Game: 12 Months, 10 Eye-Popping Hacks Targeting Some Of the Globe’s Biggest Gaming FirmsThe past year has seen a sharp increase in attacks aimed at online gaming platforms and game makers. In fact, there was a point last summer, in the wake of Sony’s Playstation Network outage, when it seemed like no video game company was safe from hackers – whether they be ideologically motivated groups like Lulzsec or run-of-the-mill cyber crooks.

An Armenian court sentenced a 27-year old Russian man to four years in jail this week following his conviction in connection with the infamous Bredolab botnet that infected 30 million computers over the last few years.G. Avanesov, later identified as Georgy Avanesov by several media outlets, was officially sentenced for committing computer sabotage by the Court of First Instance of Armenia’s Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts Monday.

Users who receive e-mails that appear to come from Facebook asking if they’d like to cancel their accounts should beware that it’s more than likely an attempt to install malware on their computers.