Apple pitched security measures in its mobile gadgets on Thursday during its first presentation at a premier gathering of hackers and that intent on thwarting cyber attacks.

The unprecedented talk by Apple head of software platform security Dallas De Atley at the 15th annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas came as hackers increasingly target smartphones at the heart of Internet Age lifestyles.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Friday posted a record net profit of 5.19 trillion won ($4.53 billion) in the second quarter, powered by strong smartphone sales despite the global downturn.

The company, the world's biggest technology firm in revenue terms, also reported a record operating profit in April-June of 6.72 trillion won.

A freak double failure in its data centers took Twitter down for around an hour Thursday, leaving millions without updates from friends, celebrities and news providers a day ahead of the Olympics.

"We are sorry," said Mazen Rawashdeh, Twitter's vice president of engineering, in a message on the company's support blog.

Improved technology has driven down credit card fraud in Europe dramatically, the European Central Bank said Wednesday in it’s first-ever report on the issue.

"Card fraud has been on a declining trend since 2007 ... technological advances have been key to increasing the security of transactions," the central bank said.

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin made his debut Thursday on Forbes magazine's list of the 40 richest people in Singapore with a fortune estimated at $2.2 billion.

The Brazilian, who moved to the rich city-state in 2009 and is now a permanent resident, was ranked eighth in a list dominated by Singaporeans whose wealth comes from property, finance and other businesses.

Ten years after the fall of the Taliban, who banned modern technology as un-Islamic, the use of social media in Afghanistan is booming as politicians, warlords and even militants rush to get their message across.

The hardline Islamists who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and forbade the use of the Internet, deeming it a Western propaganda tool, now regularly use Twitter to promote their ideas and boast about attacks on NATO forces.

Big technology firms including Google, Facebook, eBay and Amazon have joined to create a new lobby group aimed at promoting "an open, innovative and free Internet."

The Internet Association announced its formation in a statement on its website, indicating it will be headed by Michael Beckerman, a former congressional staffer.

A semi-official Iranian news agency says police hope to work with Facebook to fight cyber-crimes and pornography — a turnabout in Tehran's stance toward the social networking giant that it previously banned after activists used it as an organizing tool.

A Tuesday report by ISNA quotes Gen. Kamal Hadianfar, head of Iran's cyber-police, as saying the country is trying to remove pages on Facebook created by Iranian citizens that promote pornography and prostitution.

More consumers are buying the least expensive iPhones and iPads, a new phenomenon that is causing Apple's breakneck growth rate to slow.

On Tuesday, Apple Inc. revealed that both revenue and net income posted increases of just over 20 percent — cause for celebration at most companies, but meager by Apple standards.

South Korea's LG Electronics said Wednesday its second-quarter net profit surged 47 percent from a year earlier, thanks largely to booming sales of flat-screen televisions and home appliances.

The world's second-largest flat-screen TV maker by shipments after Samsung Electronics reported net profit of 159 billion won ($138.2 million) for April-June, up from 108.44 billion won a year earlier.