In a statement issued late Thursday evening, Verizon Wireless acknowledged that some of its employees accessed president-elect Barack Obama's cell phone records without authorization.

The statement read:

"This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed president-elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone account. All employees who have accessed the account -- whether authorized or not -- have been put on immediate leave, with pay."

Verizon also apologized for the security breach:

"We apologize to president-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day."

Verizon said that Obama's account had been inactive for months, and that no emails or other data was accessed as the phone was a simple flip-phone, not a smartphone.

With reports such as this emerging, it makes sense that Obama won't be permitted to use his BlackBerry in the White House - it's simply not secure enough.

The BlackBerry is one of President-elect Barack Obama's favorite gadgets, but according to a White House technology analyst, he won't be able to take it with him when he moves into the White House. The ban is in place because the government can't guarantee the full security of his communications, and may even extend into his use of e-mail. Insiders believe that this may be a difficult habit for the tech-savvy leader.

Throughout his campaign, the BlackBerry allowed Obama to be constantly updated and connected.

Georgetown University Professor and Presidential tech analyst Diana Owen said that the potential hacking of Obama's BlackBerry is a threat best dealt with by not using it at all. The Presidential Records Act also comes in to play, which states that any correspondence by the President or VP is owned by the public and subject to historical review.

Even though he'll be barred from using his BlackBerry, Obama aides say that he is determined to be the first President to use a laptop in the Oval Office.

A Canadian researcher recently discovered that a Chinese version of eBay's Skype communications software allows Chinese officials to snoop on text chats containing certain keywords, such as "democracy." The news is not only of interests to Chinese rights groups and those who monitor internet censorship, but it also is likely to capture the interest of law enforcement and intelligence agencies who have been bothered by the growing use of Skype.

Skype currently claims 338 million users across the world, and has proven difficult to wiretap. Calls and chats made through Skype are done between computers over the Internet, and its contents are supposedly encrypted. This has raised concerns within the law enforcement community that Skype might let criminals communicate without the fear of eavesdropping.

In the United States, the FBI has argued for applying current US wiretapping law to Internet phone calls. They were able to get a favorable court ruling in 2006, but it is still not clear whether it applies to systems like Skype that skip traditional telephone networks.

Law enforcement officials revealed Monday that the FBI had searched the home of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend, searching for evidence that would link him to the hacking of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account.

The young man, David Kernell, 20, is the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat and chairman of Tennessee's House Government Operations Committee. Mike Kernell denies having any involvement in the hacking, stating:

"I had nothing to do with it, I had no knowledge or anythin. I was not a party to anything of this nature at all. I wasn't in on this - and I wouldn't know how to do anything like that."

Last week a hacker broke into a personal Yahoo e-mail account of Sarah Palin, exposing some of her e-mails as evidence of the hacking. The McCain campaign confirmed the break-in, labeling it a "shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law."

The illegal access gained to Sarah Palin's personal Yahoo e-mail account should serve as a lesson for anyone using third-party e-mail services. It didn't take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure out how to get in, but rather a little searching, a few guesses, and a little luck.

The attack was executed by 4Chan's random /b/ board, which has helped popularized the lolcats and is a favorite hang-out of the "Anonymous" group known for launching large-scare anti-Scientology protests. Tuesday evening, a member of the /b/ board broke into vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account at Yahoo. They read the e-mails, and then posted the account username and password on the board. Naturally, others also became curious, and various /b/ boarders accessed the account, not forgetting to take screenshots as proof.

The member that initalized access to Palin's account gained access through Yahoo's password recovery feature. Using Wikipedia, the member in question began to fill in the answers.

A message posted to the board explains the process:

In one episode of "The Simpsons", specifically "The Dad Who Knew Too Much", Home was seen with the email address chunkylover53@aol.com. Smartly, one of the writers on the show registered that email address, and answered fans' questions on occasion. But now fans who email that address are getting an extra special present, one they'd rather not be getting.

SanDisk has unveiled their very first write-once memory card, called the WORM (Write Once Read Many) SD card. It's not really aimed for consumer use, but rather is geared towards industries where unalterable content is important, such as electronic voting, court testimony, and police investigations.

SanDisk makes the claim that there is "no physical way to alter or delete individual recorded files." They should have added "yet" to that statement because I'm pretty sure hackers would love to have a go at it and prove their statements wrong.

The WORM SD card touts a 100-year archive life when kept under appropriate storage conditions. For the time being the card is only available in the 128MB size, but larger capacity WORM SD cards will be out in the near future.

On Thursday, a group of hackers defaced the pages of ICANN's website, and launched a phishing scam that spoofed the organization's site that hit thousands of inboxes across the country. A Turkish group known as "NetDevilz", who have been linked to 31 attacks this year alone, hijacked icann.com, icann.net, iana.com, and iana-servers.com - all sites which belong to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

The defaced pages replaced content with the group's name, and the message "You think that you control the domains but you don't! Everybody knows wrong. We control the domains including ICANN! Don't believe us? haha :) (Lovable Turkish hackers group.)"

The phishing attack was launched a few days before the defacement, and targeted domain owners. The emails contained the following message:

>Dear Domain Account Holder,
>
>You are being sent this notice from ICANN due to the fact that you
>currently own an active domain name. ICANN is currently upgrading all
>domains from their registry database.
>
>The upgrade will introduce new control options for your domain and easier
>access. The new upgrade is required by the registry. All domain users are
>expected to submit their domain information manually at