Samsung Ordered to Pay $1 billion to apple over lawsuit

Apple won a decisive victory on Friday in a lawsuit against Samsung, a verdict that will give Apple ammunition in a far-flung patent war with its global competitors in the smartphone business.

The nine jurors in the case, who faced the daunting task of answering more than 700 questions on sometimes highly technical matters, returned a verdict after just three days of deliberations at a federal courthouse in San Jose, California.

They found that Samsung infringed on a series of Apple’s patents on mobile devices, awarding Apple more than $1 billion in damages.

That is not a big financial blow to Samsung, one of the world’s largest electronics companies. But the decision could essentially force it and other smartphone makers to redesign their products to be less Apple-like, or risk further legal defeats.

Apple responds to journalist's iCloud hack

After a reporter said account breaches occurred when an AppleCare technician fell prey to social engineering, the tech giant says, "our own internal policies were not followed completely."

After former Gizmodo reporter Mat Honan's entire digital presence was hacked via a loophole in AppleCare, Apple now says it is looking into how users can reset their account passwords to ensure that their data is protected.

It all began when Honan took to his Tumblr blog on Friday, detailing the events that led to his online life being sabotaged -- with his Google and Twitter accounts being deleted and his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone being wiped clean. He blamed an AppleCare technician for allowing his accounts to be hacked, as well as the tech blog's official feed.

After deliberating over the ways it could have happened on his blog, Honan heard back from Apple.

"Apple takes customer privacy seriously and requires multiple forms of verification before resetting an Apple ID password," Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris told Wired, where Honan now works. "In this particular case, the customer's data was compromised by a person who had acquired personal information about the customer. In addition, we found that our own internal policies were not followed completely. We are reviewing all of our processes for resetting account passwords to ensure our customers' data is protected."