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By Caroline Copley HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – It's not just computers and mobile phones that are vulnerable to cyber attack, according to software firm Trend Micro. As more devices are hooked up to the Internet, it could be anything from medical equipment to industrial machinery – and even sex toys. To illustrate the point, Trend Micro spokesman Udo Schneider surprised journalists at a news conference this week by placing a large, neon-pink vibrator on the desk in front of him and then bringing it to life by typing out a few lines of code on his laptop.

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Hutchison Whampoa Ltd on Friday sought EU approval for its 10.25-billion-pound ($15.82 billion) bid for Telefonica's British mobile unit O2, the same day regulators unveiled a tougher approach towards mergers in the sector. The European Commission said it would decide by Oct. 16 whether to clear the deal, which would make Hutchison's Three UK business the second-biggest of the UK’s three remaining network operators. The EU competition authority could either clear the deal with or without conditions or open an extensive investigation if it has serious concerns.

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Bertelsmann SE & Co KGaA, Europe's largest media group, is close to acquiring a minority stake in learning technology firm HotChalk, according to people familiar with the matter, as the educational technology sector continues to grow. Bertelsmann is leading a funding round that could value the Campbell, California-based company at $600 million to $800 million, the people said this week. Bertelsmann may use one of its subsidiaries for the investment, which is still under negotiation, the people added.

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By Gerry Shih BEIJING (Reuters) – China's Lenovo Group Ltd will lay off 10 percent of white-collar staff after sales of Motorola handsets fell by a third, raising doubts over the personal computer giant's bet that a money-losing brand it bought for nearly $3 billion will help it become a global smartphone leader. Lenovo, which uses the U.S. dollar in operations rather than the recently devalued Chinese yuan, said it plans to cut about 3,200 non-manufacturing jobs with a one-time cost of $600 million. Beijing-based Lenovo said the restructuring would yield savings of about $1.35 billion on an annual basis.

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Mark Karpeles, the former head of defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, was arrested on Saturday in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the virtual currency, Japanese media reports said. The French-born Karpeles, 30, is suspected of falsifying data on the outstanding balance of the exchange, at one point the world's largest hub for trading the digital currency, they added. When it filed for bankruptcy in February 2014, Mt. Gox said 750,000 customer bitcoins and another 100,000 belonging to the exchange were stolen due to a software security flaw.

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By Euan Rocha and Alastair Sharp TORONTO (Reuters) – BlackBerry Ltd posted a surprise quarterly profit on Friday and said it is pushing to end a slide in its revenue in this fiscal year, sending the stock up as much as 5.1 percent. We're now turning our attention to revenue stabilization,” BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen said on a conference call. Chen plans to grow BlackBerry's small but high-margin software division by moving more customers onto its products, including a system that allows companies and government agencies to manage multiple employee devices. The stock rose as high as $9.77, before easing to $9.59, up 3.1 percent on the Nasdaq, despite a much bigger-than-expected decline in fiscal fourth quarter revenue.