Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent have launched a major legal attack on Apple, filing lawsuits in Germany and the US that accuse Apple of infringing 32 patents. According to Nokia's statement, the patents cover technologies that include display, user interface, software, antenna, chipsets, and video coding.

The US lawsuit includes 10 patents and was filed in federal court in East Texas, a venue that's long been favored by patent owners. Most of the patents originated at Nokia, but at least one originated at Lucent Technologies. Nokia agreed to buy Alcatel Lucent in 2015 and completed the deal last year.

If you’re paranoid, and you know what hackers can do when they can get their hands on your computer even for just a few moments, you probably already know that you shouldn’t leave your laptop unattended.

Now, if you’re an Apple user, you have another great reason not to do that. Using a contraption that costs around $300 and some open source software, a hacker could steal your MacBook password from your own laptop while it’s sleeping or locked in just 30 seconds. This would allow them to unlock the computer and even decrypt the files on your hard drive. In other words, game over. As it turns out, Mac stores the password in memory in cleartext.

Artificial intelligence researchers at Apple are going to start publishing some of their work and engaging more with the wider academic community.

Russ Salakhutdinov, director of AI research at Apple and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, made the announcement at the NIPS conference. The Californian tech giant has traditionally kept research breakthroughs to itself, seeing any developments as valuable intellectual property, so this is a major change in direction. Companies like Google and Facebook already allow their employees to publish their research across a number of fields, including AI.

A lock is only good at protecting things if it actually stays locked. The activation lock in iOS, for example, makes it very hard for someone other than the owner to wipe an iPhone or iPad and set it up as a new device. Very hard, but not impossible.

Two different bugs have recently been discovered that could allow someone to bypass Apple’s activation lock. One impacts devices running iOS 10.1 and another on the most current version of the software, iOS 10.1.1. Expert workaround exploited a weakness in the iOS device setup process, and he tested it on a locked iPad he purchased from eBay.

Apple has a hidden feature for you in its iPhones: call logs going back as far as four months are stored in near real-time in the iCloud. That’s the warning today from a Russian provider of iPhone hacking tools, Elcomsoft, which claimed the feature was automatic and there was no way to turn it off bar shutting down iCloud Drive altogether.

Whilst it was well-known that iCloud backups would store call logs, contacts and plenty of other valuable data, users should be concerned to learn that their communications records are consistently being sent to Apple servers without explicit permission, said Elcomsoft CEO Vladimir Katalov.

Apple Inc. is weighing an expansion into digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative area of wearable computing, according to people familiar with the matter. While still in an exploration phase, the device would connect wirelessly to iPhones, show images and other information in the wearer’s field of vision, and may use augmented reality, the people said.

They asked not to be identified speaking about a secret project. Apple has talked about its glasses project with potential suppliers, according to people familiar with those discussions. The company has ordered small quantities of near-eye displays from one supplier for testing, the people said.

Security researchers at Cylance have uncovered a malware-spreading campaign that uses Google AdWords to pump out rogue code to macOS users. The malefactors bought the AdWords top ranking for the search term "Google Chrome," which appeared to lead the user to www.google.com/chrome.

In fact it redirected them to googlechromelive.com, which hoisted a fake download page for the popular browser. "On the other hand, the malicious download link redirects macOS users through ttb.mysofteir.com, servextrx.com, and www.bundlesconceptssend.com then ultimately downloads a malicious file named FLVPlayer.dmg," the team said in a blog posting.

In the continuing dribble of leaked emails from John Podesta's inbox, WikiLeaks has revealed an interesting exchange between Apple and the Clinton campaign manager where the Cupertino firm talks about giving governments its customer data.

Following Apple's firm stance on encryption surrounding the shooter's iPhone, where US authorities unsuccessfully demanded Apple provide a "backdoor" to the handset, this may come as somewhat of a shock. However, refrain from throwing your arms in the air just yet. In the email Apple VP Lisa Jackson is actually reaching out to John Podesta to thank Clinton's "principled and nuanced stance" on encryption in the tech sector.

Apple has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car.

Hundreds of members of the car team, which comprises about 1,000 people, have been reassigned, let go, or have left of their own volition in recent months, asking not to be identified because the moves aren’t public. New leadership of the initiative, known internally as Project Titan, has re-focused on developing an autonomous driving system that gives Apple flexibility to either partner with existing carmakers, or return to designing its own vehicle in the future. 

Ministers have been barred from wearing Apple Watches during Cabinet meetings amid concerns that they could be hacked by Russian spies.

Under David Cameron, several cabinet ministers wore the smart watches, including Michael Gove, the former Justice Secretary. However, under Theresa May ministers have been barred from wearing them amid concerns that they could be used by hackers as listening devices. Concerns have been raised after hackers obtained confidential emails from the Democratic National Congress during the US election. Mobile phones have already been barred from the Cabinet.