BlackBerry Ltd launched its long-awaited Classic device on Wednesday, a smartphone it hopes will help it win back market share and woo those still using older versions of its physical keyboard devices.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based mobile technology said the new device, which bears a striking similarity to its once-bestselling Bold and Curve handsets, boasts a larger screen, longer battery life, expanded app library with access to he offerings from Amazon.com Inc's Android App store, and a browser three times faster than the one on its legacy devices.

"BlackBerry Classic is the powerful communications tool that many BlackBerry Bold and Curve users have been waiting for," Chief Executive Officer John Chen said in a statement, noting the device brings back the command bar functionalities that helped make its legacy devices easy to navigate.

When the company initially introduced its new BlackBerry 10 operating system and devices early in 2012 it put more emphasis on touchscreens, alienating many fans of its physical keyboard.

Moreover, those who moved to its new physical keyboard devices it later launched were unhappy that command keys like the 'Menu,' 'Back,' 'Send' and 'End' buttons, along with the trackpad had been dropped.

Chen is in some ways taking the company back to its roots, re-emphasizing the physical keyboard with the recent launch of the Passport and the Classic models, rather than trying to compete directly against the touchscreen handsets of dominant rivals like Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc.

Chen, who became CEO a year ago, is also pivoting BlackBerry to earn more revenue from software, as system access fees from those using its legacy devices wind down.

Analysts have noted a successful launch of the Classic would accelerate service revenue erosion because the new devices do not generate system access fees. But a jump in hardware revenue from Classic and Passport sales would give BlackBerry time to scale up its software business in 2015.

"We believe that the company's current strategy of staying true to its core user base of business users – in industries such as healthcare, banking and insurance – rather than chasing the mainstream could help to transform the handset division into

a stable business," said research firm Trefis in a recent note to clients.

Reuters

The Federal Court of Canada agreed on Wednesday to order Apple Inc's Canadian subsidiary to turn over documents to the Competition Bureau to help investigate whether Apple unfairly used its market power to promote the sale of iPhones.

In seeking the order, the Competition Bureau had said agreements Apple negotiated with wireless carriers may have cut into competition 

by encouraging the companies to maintain or boost the price of rival phones.

Federal Court Chief Justice Paul Crampton told the court he would sign the order later on Wednesday.

Reuters

TAG Heuer is pushing ahead with plans for a smartwatch to more directly compete with the likes of the Apple Watch and may make acquisitions to help drive the strategy, its head said on Tuesday.

Swiss watch makers like TAG Heuer, the biggest brand in luxury goods group LVMH's watch portfolio, had until recently largely 

dismissed the threat of "smart" gadgets, but LVMH watch chief Jean-Claude Biver says he had changed his mind on the subject.

Biver, who had already outlined plans for a smartwatch, said he had struck several partnerships and was mulling purchases to help come up with an original upmarket offering.

Switzerland's watch industry is facing competition from these wearable gadgets that allow users to check email or make phone calls. Swatch Group, the world's biggest watchmaker, said in August it planned a launch next summer.

"We started on the project about four months ago. We have done several partnerships and might also do acquisitions," Biver, head of LVMH watches and TAG Heuer interim chief executive, told journalists at the brand's headquarters at La Chaux-de-Fonds in western Switzerland.

Asked whether the likes of Google Inc and Intel Corp were among the partners, newly appointed general manager Guy Semon declined comment but said there were many partners involved.

Media reports have said the company plans an Intel microprocessor-driven design featuring a mechanical action supplemented with electronic sensors monitoring things like calories burnt.

TSUNAMI COMING

"Smartwatches represent a challenge to the Swiss watch industry that is comparable to the appearance of quartz technology. We cannot ignore this tsunami that is coming closer," Semon said.

Biver said TAG Heuer, which promotes its upmarket sporty image with models such as the Carrera which it describes as inspired by motor racing, would make an announcement once it had a good product to present, or late 2015 at the earliest.

"We'll only do it if we can be first, different and unique," he said. He would not say how much the brand would invest in the project, part of a drive to refocus on accessible watches appealing to a large customer base.

Biver, who took over as head of LVMH watches in March, has initiated a restructuring to tackle slowing demand, dismissing 46 employees and placing 49 on temporary leave, as the development of a new mechanical movement was put on hold and the brand pulled out of leather accessories and luxury mobile phones.

Chief Executive Stephane Linder last week stepped down after a year and a half in the role, so Biver also took on the CEO post.

Reuters

An Indian court on Tuesday temporarily allowed Xiaomi Technology Co Ltd to sell some of its devices in the country, about a week after it had asked the Chinese company to suspend sales in the world's third largest smartphone market.

Xiaomi had been asked to suspend selling its smartphones in a case related to patent

 infringements that telecom equipment maker Ericsson had filed against the Chinese company.

On Tuesday, the court gave Xiaomi permission to continue importing phones which have Qualcomm chipsets in them until the next hearing on Jan. 8, provided Xiaomi deposited 100 Indian rupees ($1.5712) for every device sold, Ericsson said.

Xiaomi, whose low-priced but feature-rich phones have made it the biggest smartphone vendor in China, sells exclusively through online retailer Flipkart.com in India.

Both Xiaomi and Flipkart.com had been ordered by the Delhi High Court to stop selling the devices until Feb. 5, when it is due to hear the case, according to court documents seen by Reuters.

"Xiaomi needs a license from Ericsson for all their phones imported to India, which will be clarified in the upcoming hearing," an Ericsson spokesman said in an email. Xiaomi said the company would not comment on the developments.

Xiaomi’s Mi3 and Redmi 1S use Qualcomm chips, according to the company's website. Its Redmi Note device uses a processor from MediaTek Inc.

(1 US dollar = 63.6450 Indian rupee)

Reuters

The U.S. National Security Agency's mass surveillance is a trade barrier for European Internet companies trying to provide services in the United States, a top EU official said on Monday.

U.S. citizens are deterred from using European e-mail providers because they do not get the same protection as they would by using U.S. providers, said Paul Nemitz, a director in the European Commission's justice department.

"The law ... which empowers the NSA to basically grab everything which comes from outside the United States, is a real trade barrier to a European digital company to provide services to Americans inside America," Nemitz, who is overseeing an overhaul of the EU's 20-year-old data protection rules, said at a conference on data protection in Paris.

In other words, an American in the United States using a European service does not have the same level of protection as he would if he used an American service. Using a European service, his communication is transmitted outside the United States, so it is subject to interception.

The comments underscore the widespread unease within Europe about access to people's data by both security services and companies. They also come at a time when Brussels and Washington are renegotiating a data-sharing agreement - called Safe Harbour - used by over 3,000 companies.

The Safe Harbour agreement makes it easier for U.S. companies to do business in Europe by certifying that their handling of user data meets EU data-protection laws.

Last year's revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency's surveillance of Europeans' electronic communications sent shockwaves across Europe. It prompted the Commission to demand concessions from the United States as a condition for not suspending the Safe Harbour agreement.

Under U.S. law, broad collection of e-mail to, from or about foreigners is allowed. Privacy campaigners say that under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, security services do not have to prove that intercepting a foreign citizen's electronic communications is necessary for national security reasons.

The Commission is pushing for Washington to guarantee that it will only access Europeans' personal data for national security reasons when it is strictly necessary, as it does with U.S. citizens' data.

The EU is also negotiating a new pan-European data- protection law which would impose stiff fines on companies mishandling personal data in Europe.

Companies in both the United States and the EU have lobbied against some parts of the new rules, arguing that they will impose too much red tape on businesses.

But French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said at the same data-protection conference that high standards of privacy would attract companies looking to regain customers' trust in the wake of the Snowden revelations.

"The European standard of data protection is not an obstacle to economic activity," Valls said. "Europe must make data protection an argument for attractiveness and competitiveness."

Reuters

 Sony Corp's PlayStation online store was hacked on Monday, leading to a two-hour outage, the Financial Times reported, without citing sources.

Sony confirmed the outage and said it was investigating the cause.

The company has not received any report that information has been leaked or stolen, the FT said.

Sony said users faced difficulty accessing the PlayStation network between 8:52 a.m. and 11:18 a.m. Tokyo time on Monday (6:52 p.m.-9:18 p.m. ET on Sunday) and the issue had been resolved.

The outage follows a denial-of-service attack on the PlayStation network in August. A Twitter user with the handle @LizardSquad claimed responsibility.

A tweet on Monday from a user with the handle @LizurdPatrol and account name Lizard Squad said: "50 RTs (retweets) and we will hit off PSN (PlayStation Network). 50 FAVs (favorites) and we will hit off XBOX LIVE."

The Financial Times said that some visitors to the PlayStation online store were greeted with the message: "Page not found. It's not you. It's the internet's fault."

Last month, Sony's Hollywood studio, Sony Pictures Entertainment, was hit by a massive hack that shut down most of the studio's network for more than a week.

Following that attack hackers released sensitive data over the Internet, including employee salaries and social security numbers along with high-quality digital versions of several unreleased films.

This isn't Sony's first tryst with hackers. The company 's PlayStation network suffered a major attack in 2011, resulting in the theft of data belonging to 77 million users.

Sony's U.S. listed shares were down 3.3 percent at $21.40 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. The stock had fallen as much as 3.9 percent in early trading.

Reuters

 British spies did not break laws guaranteeing human rights when they used mass monitoring techniques revealed by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the country's surveillance watchdog ruled on Friday.

A host of civil rights groups and privacy campaigners, including Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union, had argued the tactics used by Britain's three security agencies and disclosed by Snowden to the media last year did not comply with the UK's Human Rights Act.

"The 'Snowden revelations' in particular have led to the impression voiced in some quarters that the law in some way permits the Intelligence Services carte blanche to do what they will. We are satisfied that this is not the case," Britain's Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) said in its ruling.

Snowden caused an international uproar when he disclosed details of the extent of surveillance and electronic monitoring by the NSA and its British equivalent, the General Communications Headquarters, or GCQA.

He told newspapers the NSA was mining the personal data of users of Google, Facebook, Skype and other U.S. companies under a secret program codenamed Prism, while GCHQ was accused of bypassing British laws by gaining access to communications without proper authority.

GCHQ was also accused of tapping fibre-optic cables that carry international phone and internet traffic and sharing the data with the United States.

"We have ruled that the current regime, both in relation to Prism and Upstream (another NSA program) when conducted in accordance with the requirements which we have considered, is lawful and human rights-compliant," the IPT said.

Rachel Logan, legal adviser for Amnesty UK, said the decision would be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.

"The government has managed to bluff their way out of this, retreating into closed hearings and constantly playing the 'national security' card," she said.

"The government's entire defense has amounted to 'trust us' and now the tribunal has said the same. Since we only know about the scale of such surveillance thanks to Snowden, and given that 'national security' has been recklessly bandied around, 'trust us' isn't enough."

The new head of GCHQ said last month the security services needed greater access to Facebook and Twitter because of their importance to militant groups, while spy chiefs have argued Snowden's revelations have damaged their capabilities and put operations at risk.

Reuters

NASA's new Orion spacecraft hit its intended high point of 3,600 miles above Earth on its orbital test flight Friday, the farthest a spacecraft built for humans has traveled in four decades.

Now its dramatic trip back to the planet awaits to conclude a mission ushering in a new era of exploration that could one day put people on Mars.

The unmanned capsule reached peak altitude of 3,604 miles three hours after the sunrise liftoff. No spacecraft designed for humans had reached so far since Apollo 17 — NASA's final moon shot — 42 years ago.

As Orion zoomed flawlessly toward that high point on its second lap around Earth, the planet could be seen shrinking in the televised view out the capsule window.

NASA needed to send Orion that high in order to set the crew module up for a 20,000-mph, 4,000-degree entry over the Pacific. This part of the operation was perhaps most critical: seeing how the heat shield would hold up before putting humans on board. On cue, the service module was detached, leaving Orion flying free for the first time for the ride home.

Orion's debut was designed to be brief — just 4½ hours from launch to splashdown, with two orbits of Earth.

And it's NASA's first new vehicle for space travel since the shuttle.

"Very exciting," said NASA's Orion program manager, Mark Geyer.

NASA is now "one step closer" to putting humans aboard Orion, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. He called it "Day One of the Mars era."

Sluggish rocket valves and wind gusts halted the launch Thursday, but everything went NASA's way Friday as the Delta IV rocket carried Orion into orbit. NASA launch commentator Mike Curie fed the enthusiasm in the gathered crowds, calling it "the dawn of Orion in a new era of American space exploration!"

The atmosphere at Kennedy Space Center was reminiscent of the shuttle-flying days, but considerably more upbeat than that last mission in 2011.

Astronaut Rex Walheim was aboard that final shuttle flight and joined dozens of space fliers on hand for this historic send-off. He talked up Orion's future in sending crews to Mars and the importance of becoming what he called "a multi-planetary species."

"You have that excitement back here at the Kennedy Space Center and it's tinged with even more excitement with what's coming down the road," Walheim said.

His enthusiasm was shared by Chris Tarkenton, who traveled from Poquoson, Virginia, to watch from the nearby causeway.

"It's been a while since we've been able to launch something of this magnitude," Tarkenton said. "Awe inspiring."

In Houston, NASA's Mission Control took over the entire operation once Orion was aloft. The flight program was loaded into Orion's computers well in advance, allowing the spacecraft to fly essentially on autopilot. Flight controllers — all shuttle veterans — could intervene in the event of an emergency breakdown.

And in the Pacific off the Mexican Baja coast, Navy ships waited for Orion's return.

The spacecraft is rigged with 1,200 sensors to gauge everything from heat to vibration to radiation. At 11 feet tall with a 16.5-foot base, Orion is bigger than the old-time Apollo capsules and, obviously, more advanced.

NASA deliberately kept astronauts off this first Orion.

Managers wanted to test the riskiest parts of the spacecraft — the heat shield, parachutes, various jettisoning components — before committing to a crew. In addition, on-board computers endured the high-radiation Van Allen belts; engineers wondered whether they might falter. Orion flew more than 14 times higher than the International Space Station; the six station astronauts watched the events unfold via a live TV feed.

Friday's Orion — serial number 001 — lacked seats, cockpit displays and life-support equipment for obvious reasons. Instead, bundles of toys and memorabilia were on board: bits of moon dust; the crew patch worn by Sally Ride, America's first spacewoman; a Capt. James Kirk collector's doll owned by "Star Trek" actor William Shatner; and more.

Lockheed Martin Corp. already has begun work on a second Orion and plans to build a fleet of the capsules. The earliest astronauts might fly on an Orion is 2021. An asteroid redirected to lunar orbit is intended for the first stop in the 2020s, followed by Mars in the 2030s.

The company handled the $370 million test flight for NASA from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, opting for the Delta IV rocket this time given its heft. It's the most powerful unmanned rocket in the U.S. right now. The entire rocket and capsule, topped by a launch abort tower, stretched 242 feet and weighed 1.6 million pounds — an "incredible monster," according to Bolden.

To push Orion farther out on future flights, NASA is developing a megarocket known as Space Launch System or SLS. The first Orion-SLS combo will fly around 2018, again without a crew to shake out the rocket.

NASA's last trip beyond low-Earth orbit in a vessel built for people was the three-man Apollo 17 in December 1972. Orion will be capable of carrying four astronauts on long hauls and as many as six on three-week hikes.

Bolden, a former astronaut and now NASA's No. 1, called Mars "the ultimate destination of this generation," but said his three young granddaughters think otherwise, telling him, "Don't get hung up on Mars because there are other places to go once we get there."

AP

Wind gusts and sticky fuel valves conspired to keep NASA's new Orion spacecraft on the launch pad Thursday, delaying a crucial test flight meant to revitalize human exploration.

NASA promised to try again Friday morning as tens of thousands of disappointed and weary launch guests hustled out. But the weather report wasn't promising: NASA forecasters expected more wind, clouds and rain, with only a 40 percent chance that  conditions        would allow for a launch.

"I'm running on no hours of sleep, zero, zero hours," said Sarah McNulty, a space educator who was helping NASA escort the several-hundred news media on hand. She said she'd be back again by sunrise, "bright and early."

NASA's new countdown clock got a workout as problem after problem cropped up in the final four minutes, and the count switched back and forth.

A stray boat in the launch-danger zone kicked things off badly. Then excessive wind twice halted the countdown, followed by valve trouble on the unmanned Delta IV rocket that could not be fixed in time. Declining battery power in the rocket's video camera system reinforced the decision to quit for the day.

"It was a roller coaster: We're going, we're not going," McNulty said. "But that's how the launch business is."

At least one group was pleased by the launch delay: all the sold-out hotels and the restaurants surrounding the space center, which lost considerable business when the space shuttles stopped flying in 2011.

Orion is how NASA hopes to one day send astronauts to Mars. This inaugural flight, while just 4 1/2 hours, will send the unmanned capsule 3,600 miles into space.

It's the first attempt to send a spacecraft capable of carrying humans beyond a couple hundred miles of Earth since the Apollo moon program.

The ultimate goal, in the decades ahead, is to use Orion to carry people to Mars and back.

An estimated 27,000 guests gathered for the historic send-off — roads leading into Kennedy Space Center were packed well before dawn — and the atmosphere was reminiscent of the shuttle-flying days. "Go Orion!!" urged a hotel billboard in nearby Cocoa Beach.

A Thursday launch would have been special for another reason: NASA launch commentator Mike Curie noted that it was the 16th anniversary of the launch of the first U.S. piece of the International Space Station, by shuttle Endeavour. "That was the beginning of the space station, and today is the dawn of Orion," he said.

Among the dozen or so active astronauts in attendance — and even more former ones — was Anna Fischer, one of NASA's original spacewomen, and now assigned to the Orion program. Like so many others, Fisher voiced disappointment at the delay, but noted: "It's way more important to have a successful flight."

"It was so much fun to come out here and have that same atmosphere as before a shuttle launch," Fisher said. "We really miss that. That's why we're here. This is what we love."

Orion is aiming for two orbits on this inaugural run. On the second lap around the home planet, the spacecraft should reach a peak altitude of 3,600 miles, high enough to ensure a re-entry speed of 20,000 mph and an environment of 4,000 degrees. Splashdown will be in the Pacific off the Mexican Baja coast, where Navy ships already are waiting.

NASA's Mission Control in Houston was all set to oversee the entire 4 1/2-hour operation once the rocket was in flight, with legendary Apollo 11 and 13 flight director Gene Kranz showing up to watch. The flight program was loaded into Orion's computers well in advance, allowing the spacecraft to fly essentially on autopilot. Flight controllers could intervene in the event of an emergency breakdown.

The spacecraft is rigged with 1,200 sensors to gauge everything from heat to vibration to radiation. At 11 feet tall with a 16.5-foot base, Orion is bigger than the old-time Apollo capsules and, obviously, more advanced. As NASA's program manager Mark Geyer noted, "The inside of the capsule is totally different."

NASA deliberately kept astronauts off this first Orion.

Managers want to test the riskiest parts of the spacecraft — the heat shield, parachutes, various jettisoning components — before committing to a crew. The earliest Orion might carry passengers is 2021; asteroids are on the space agency's radar sometime in the 2020s and Mars, the grand prize, in the 2030s.

Lockheed Martin Corp., which is handling the $370 million test flight for NASA, opted for the powerful Delta IV rocket this time around. Future Orion missions will rely on NASA's still-in-development megarocket known as SLS, or Space Launch System. The first Orion-SLS combo launch is targeted for 2018.

NASA's last trip beyond low-Earth orbit in a vessel built for people was Apollo 17 in December 1972, the last time men set foot on the moon.

"It's a thrilling prospect when you think about actually exploring the solar system," space station commander Butch Wilmore said from orbit as the Orion countdown entered its final hour. "Who knows where it will take us, who knows where it will go. We'll find out as time goes forward, but this first step is a huge one."

AP

 Apple's newest iPhones ran into some glitches Wednesday after users complained that a new software update blocked their calls, while a widely circulated video showed the larger of the two new models is vulnerable to bending.

Apple said it would stop providing the software update, which it began distributing Wednesday morning to fix several issues in last week's iOS 8 operating system for iPhones and iPads.

The decision to pull the update came after some people complained on Twitter and in Apple user chatrooms that the update, dubbed iOS 8.0.1, rendered their phones unable to make calls and caused problems with a feature that lets people unlock their phones with their fingerprint.

By midday Wednesday, Apple announced that it was investigating the reports and would issue advice to users "as quickly as we can." Users are still able to the upgrade older phones to last week's version of iOS 8, which Apple said has already been downloaded to nearly half of all iOS devices.

Some tech blogs reported the update only seemed to cause problems for the latest phone models — the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. It's not uncommon for new software to contain bugs that have to be fixed with subsequent releases.

Meanwhile, social media sites were buzzing Wednesday with reports that the aluminum shell of the iPhone 6 Plus is vulnerable to bending. Some Twitter users claimed their phones showed a slight curving at one end after several hours in a pants pocket. With a 5.5-inch screen, the iPhone 6 Plus is slightly longer and thinner than other iPhone models.

It's not clear how widespread the complaints are. One YouTube video showed someone bending an iPhone 6 Plus by applying extended pressure with his hands — not from normal sitting.

Both the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus were given high ratings in a recent "breakability" test conducted by SquareTrade, a San Francisco firm that sells insurance to consumers for their electronic devices. The test did not include bending.

But SquareTrade Chief Marketing Officer Ty Shay said that after reports of bending circulated online, two staffers at his firm tried to bend a pair of 6 Plus phones: One staffer, a man, was able to duplicate the results from the video, while the other, a woman, could not. He said the bent phone appeared to still function normally.

Shay said his firm then checked and found a small number of bent older-model iPhones had been reported in the past. "It does happen," said Shay, "but it seems like for the most part it's cosmetic damage."

He suggested the bending is not a major issue. Referring to the iPhone 6 Plus, he added, "I think it's still a very durable phone. But we'll keep an eye on the claims."

Apple did not comment on the reports of bending.

AP

 The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned U.S. businesses that hackers have used malicious software to launch a destructive cyberattack in the United States, following a devastating breach last week at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Cybersecurity experts said the malicious software described in the alert appeared to describe the one that affected Sony, which would mark first major destructive cyber attack waged against a company on U.S. soil. Such attacks have been launched in Asia and the Middle East, but none have been reported in the United States. The FBI report did not say how many companies had been victims of destructive attacks.

"I believe the coordinated cyberattack with destructive payloads against a corporation in the U.S. represents a watershed event," said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer with security software maker Trend Micro Inc. "Geopolitics now serve as harbingers for destructive cyberattacks."

The five-page, confidential "flash" FBI warning issued to businesses late on Monday provided some technical details about the malicious software used in the attack. It provided advice on how to respond to the malware and asked businesses to contact the FBI if they identified similar malware.

The report said the malware overrides all data on hard drives of computers, including the master boot record, which prevents them from booting up.

"The overwriting of the data files will make it extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, to recover the data using standard forensic methods," the report said.

The document was sent to security staff at some U.S. companies in an email that asked them not to share the information.

The FBI released the document in the wake of last Monday's unprecedented attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, which brought corporate email down for a week and crippled other systems as the company prepares to release several highly anticipated films during the crucial holiday film season.

A Sony spokeswoman said the company had “restored a number of important services” and was “working closely with law enforcement officials to investigate the matter.”

She declined to comment on the FBI warning.

The FBI said it is investigating the attack with help from the Department of Homeland Security. Sony has hired FireEye Inc's (FEYE.O) Mandiant incident response team to help clean up after the attack, a move that experts say indicates the severity of the breach.

While the FBI report did not name the victim of the destructive attack in its bulletin, two cybersecurity experts who reviewed the document said it was clearly referring to the breach at the California-based unit of Sony Corp (6758.T).

"This correlates with information about that many of us in the security industry have been tracking," said one of the people who reviewed the document. "It looks exactly like information from the Sony attack."

FBI spokesman Joshua Campbell declined comment when asked if the software had been used against the California-based unit of Sony Corp, although he confirmed that the agency had issued the confidential "flash" warning, which Reuters independently obtained.

"The FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations," he said. "This data is provided in order to help systems administrators guard against the actions of persistent cyber criminals."

The FBI typically does not identify victims of attacks in those reports.

Hackers used malware similar to that described in the FBI report to launch attacks on businesses in highly destructive attacks in South Korea and the Middle East, including one against oil producer Saudi Aramco that knocked out some 30,000 computers. Those attacks are widely believed to have been launched by hackers working on behalf of the governments of North Korea and Iran.

Security experts said that repairing the computers requires technicians to manually either replace the hard drives on each computer, or re-image them, a time-consuming and expensive process.

Monday's FBI report said the attackers were "unknown."

Yet the technology news site Re/code reported that Sony was investigating to determine whether hackers working on behalf of North Korea were responsible for the attack as retribution for the company's backing of the film "The Interview."

The movie, which is due to be released in the United States and Canada on Dec. 25, is a comedy about two journalists recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The Pyongyang government denounced the film as "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war" in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

The technical section of the FBI report said some of the software used by the hackers had been compiled in Korean, but it did not discuss any possible connection to North Korea.

Reuters