After banning the word "jailbreak" from its app store and music library, Apple today reversed course and again permits the term - slang for hacking into a device to download unauthorized content -- to appear on iTunes and its App Store.

On Thursday bloggers noticed Apple had censored the word, using the Thin Lizzy album "Jailbreak" as an example. For awhile, the title was listed as "J******k" in Apple's music library, at least its U.S. version. In other instances, digital content continued to bear the full name Jailbreak.

Defense giant Northrop Grumman is hiring software engineers to help it carry out "offensive cyberspace operations," according to a recent job posting.

UPDATE--An Android handset produced by Chinese manufacturer ZTE has a backdoor installed that could enable an attacker to take control of an affected device remotely and run arbitrary code. The manufacturer has acknowledged the issue in the ZTE Score M, which includes a harcoded password, and says that it plans to push out a fix soon. 

Alerts issued by Visa and Mastercard earlier this week suggest that a breach at payment processor Global Payments dates to January 2011, a full year earlier than the company initially announced.

Since the beginning of recorded time, security researchers, software vendors and hackers have been issuing security advisories in all kinds of nutty formats. Some feature excellent ASCII art, some have clever inside jokes and some come from Microsoft. Now, there's a effort underway, called the Common Vulnerability Reporting Framework, to standardize the way that vulnerabilities are reported so that they're in a common, machine-readable format. 

For the aspiring attacker or pen tester, there is no shortage of attack tools, scripts, crimeware kits and exploits available online. But, the Internet being what it is, there's always room for one more. Enter HULK, a new DDoS tool that arrives just in time to coincide with the release of some movie involving the actual Hulk and other CGI-ified mediocre-heroes.

Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail users should beware of rogue rebate offers and new secure payment options aimed at getting them to part with their debit card information.

Earlier this week Amit Klein, CTO of Trusteer, announced the discovery of a peer-to-peer variant of the Zeus platform that leverages trusted relationships and well-known brands to convince users to sign up for convenient services and better secure debit card transactions. On each site, the attack displays a little differently.

Twitter has implemented the Do Not Track header on its site, giving users the option of telling the site that they do not want to be tracked across other sites on the Web. The implementation is being done through the DNT technology in the Firefox browser.

As the tech and investment banking worlds eagerly anticipate Facebook’s long-awaited initial public offering, the world’s largest social network is trying to put stops to a suspicious, but arguably benign, plugin.

Howard Schmidt, the top White House information security adviser, is retiring after more than two years on the job and several decades in security both in government and private industry. Schmidt is in his second stint as the White House security chief and he's leaving at a time when cybersecurity has moved into the top tier of military and economic concerns for the country.