Hackers claim CIA site shutdown

Hacker group Lulz Security has claimed it has brought down the public-facing Web site of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), reveals the BBC.

The alleged attack on CIA.gov occurred on the same day the group opened a telephone request line so its fans could suggest potential targets.

On its Twitter feed, the group wrote: “Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz.” The CIA Web site was inaccessible at times on Wednesday, but appeared to be back up yesterday.

HP has filed a civil lawsuit against Oracle for discontinuing software development on Intel's Itanium processor platform, reports Computing.co.uk.

Oracle has branded the lawsuit “malicious and meritless”. HP insists Oracle is deliberately ignoring previous agreements in a bid to gain a competitive advantage.

“HP believes that Oracle's 22 March statement to discontinue all future software development on the Itanium platform violates binding commitments Oracle has made to HP and the more than 140 000 shared HP-Oracle customers,” said HP in a statement.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion's (RIM's) quarterly results yesterday provided fresh evidence of the company's struggles to come up with a device to compete with the iPhone and smartphones running Google's Android operating system, says the Associated Press.

The Waterloo, Ontario, company reported a nearly 10% drop in its fiscal first-quarter net income. RIM also said it has been hurt by product delays, announced layoffs and warned that its profit for the current quarter and full fiscal year would come in well below Wall Street's expectations.

It was the second time this year the company has pared back its profit outlook.

Facebook is reportedly planning to unveil its own Web-based platform to offer applications on Apple's iOS, reveals V3.co.uk.

A report from news site TechCrunch cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter in reporting that the company was preparing a service code-named “Project Spartan”.

The report suggests the platform would be based on HTML 5 and would be specially-designed to run on the Safari browser that powers Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch lines.