Hackers attacked the official website of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday, posting a message critical of the leader who has faced weeks of protests demanding he quit.

The message, posted by a group calling themselves "Team Kuwait Hackers", described Maliki as a "tyrant" and warned him that he would end up like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been grappling with a 22-month uprising.

Though yet to be launched in North America, BlackBerry's new smartphones were already for sale online Friday, stirring bidding frenzies.

Sellers claimed they obtained the sleek new handsets at launch events in New York, Toronto, Dubai, London and Johannesburg. Journalists and analysts who attended the events were given a BlackBerry Z10, which retails for $599.

Wickr co-founder Nico Sell is working toward "geek utopia," a world where people hold the power when it comes to who sees what they share on the Internet or from their phones.

The startup's services -- giving users of Apple gadgets uncrackable communications that can self-destruct -- were beefed up this week, just in time for reports of cyber spies trying to snoop on Western journalists covering China.

A Dutch man was sentenced to 12 years in a U.S. prison on Friday for being an online "broker" for credit card numbers stolen in a computer hacking conspiracy.

David Schrooten struck a plea bargain in federal court in Seattle after being extradited from Romania for his role in a computer hacking and credit card fraud scheme, prosecutors said.

Twitter said Friday it was hammered by a "sophisticated" cyber attack similar to those that recently hit major Western news outlets, and that the passwords of about 250,000 users were stolen.

"This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident," Twitter information security director Bob Lord said in a blog post.

Google and France signed an agreement Friday resolving a dispute with French news websites that sees the U.S. Internet search giant setting up a 60 million euro fund to help old media adapt to the digital age.

"France is proud to have reached this agreement with Google, the first of its kind in the world," the French president's office said on Twitter after Francois Hollande and Google chief Eric Schmidt signed the accord.

The Wall Street Journal has become the second major U.S. media organization to accuse Chinese hackers of targeting its computers in an apparent effort to spy on journalists covering China.

The announcement on Thursday came a day after The New York Times said hackers, possibly connected to China's military, had infiltrated its computers in response to its expose of the vast wealth amassed by a top leader's family.

BlackBerry's new smartphone platform launched this week faces an uphill battle winning back corporate and government users who helped spawn the "crackberry" culture, analysts say.

The Canadian-based firm, which rebranded itself with the launch of its BlackBerry 10 platform, must stem the loss of its core customers and win over those who migrated to the iPhone or Android devices, according to industry watchers.

Facebook on Thursday began letting social network members in the United States send friends gift cards for purchases at participating shops or restaurants.

The move came as the world's leading social network seeks ways to expand how it makes money from its 1.06 billion monthly users, the majority of whom access the social network from smartphones or tablet computers.

Twitter's unmatched platform for public opinion is emboldening Gulf Arabs to exchange views on delicate issues in the deeply conservative region, despite strict censorship that controls old media.

The authorities have been attempting to limit the damage by handing out jail terms to some whose tweets have been deemed offensive in the Muslim states, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.