Indonesia Blocks iPhone, Google Pixel Over Local Manufacturing Requirement

Indonesia said it has banned sales of smartphones made by Alphabet's Google due to rules requiring the use of locally manufactured components, days after blocking sales of tech giant Apple's iPhone 16 for the same reason.Indonesia blocked sales of Google Pixel phones because the company has not met the rules which necessitate certain smartphones sold domestically to contain at least 40% of parts manufactured locally.

UK Court Rejects Meta's Bid to Challenge Class-Action Suit Over Personal Data

Meta Platforms Inc. failed in a bid to challenge a class action suit in the UK that alleged Facebook abused its dominant position and exploited its users’ personal data. The UK’s Court of Appeal refused to permit Meta and Facebook’s UK unit to challenge a competition appeals court which had greenlit a revised version of the lawsuit.

Georgia Secretary of State Asks Musk to Delete Fake Voting Video from X

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said that his office asked Elon Musk, the owner of X, and the leadership of other social platforms to take down a video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs who claimed to have voted multiple times. The secretary’s office said that the video is false and it is working to identify where the video originated.

Russian Hackers Target U.S. Officials via Spearphishing, Microsoft Says

Russian hackers are going after U.S. government officials, defense workers and others in a new email phishing campaign targeting thousands of people, according to Microsoft Corp. The hackers have sent “a series of highly targeted spearphishing emails” to thousands of people in more than 100 organizations since Oct. 22, according to a blog post from Microsoft Threat Intelligence.

Chinese Government-Linked Hackers Target Trump's Son, Son-in-Law

U.S. officials believe Chinese government-linked hackers targeted Eric Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s call and text data as the scale of a sweeping cyber-espionage campaign targeting senior figures in both the Republican and Democratic parties comes into focus just days before the U.S. election, with dozens of people believed to be impacted, three people familiar with the matter told CNN. Former President Donald Trump’s son and son-in-law join a growing list of top political figures whose phone communications US officials believe were targeted by the elite Chinese hacking team.

  • Read the article: CNN

Delta Air Lines Sues CrowdStrike for 'Catastrophic' Software Update

Delta Air Lines sued cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in a Georgia state court after a global outage in July caused mass flight cancellations, disrupted travel plans of 1.3 million customers and cost the carrier more than $500 million. Delta's lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court called the faulty software update from CrowdStrike "catastrophic" and said the firm "forced untested and faulty updates to its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world to crash."

Hacking of National Security Database Hits Italian Politicians

Italy was reeling from a weekend of revelations on hacking of a national security database, bringing to light attempts to dig up sensitive information on high-profile individuals in the business and political arenas. A senior member of the Senate and a former prime minister were among the politicians targeted by hackers hired to dig up sensitive information, daily Corriere della Sera reported.

Apple Wins Watch Design Patent Verdict Against Masimo, Gets $250

A federal jury in Delaware awarded Apple Inc. $250, finding the original designs of Masimo Corp.'s smartwatches infringed Apple Watch design patents. The jury’s mixed verdict marks the latest chapter of a long-running clash over smartwatch patents pitting Apple, a tech giant worth more than $3.5 trillion, against Masimo valued at $7.5 billion.

Chinese Hackers Targeted Data on Phones Used by Trump, Vance

Chinese hackers targeted data from phones used by former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, as part of what appears to be a wide-ranging intelligence-collection effort, people familiar with the matter said. Investigators are working to determine what communications data, if any, was taken or observed by the sophisticated penetration of telecom systems, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an active and highly sensitive national security case.

Hackers Linked to Iranian Government Reportedly Probe U.S. Election Websites

Iranian government-linked hackers have researched and probed election-related websites in multiple U.S. swing states, in a possible effort to discover vulnerabilities that could be used to influence the presidential election, Microsoft said in a report. Officials from multiple federal agencies are looking closely at the Iranian activity, a U.S. official told CNN.

  • Read the article: CNN

Film Company Behind 'Blade Runner' Sues Tesla Over Image

A film production company that helped make “Blade Runner 2049” has sued Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk for using an AI-generated image resembling a scene from the science fiction movie to market Tesla’s new robotaxis. Alcon Entertainment said it refused all permissions but Tesla allegedly used artificial intelligence to “do it all anyway” when the carmaker unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi on Oct. 10 during a live-streamed event at a Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, California.

More Tensions Expected in U.S.-China Tech War Whoever Wins Election

The U.S.-China tech war is all but certain to heat up no matter whether Republican Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris wins the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, with the Democrat likely to come out with targeted new rules and Trump a blunter approach. New efforts to slow the flow of less-sophisticated Chinese chips, smart cars and other imports into the U.S. are expected, alongside more curbs on chipmaking tools and highly-prized AI chips headed to China, according to former officials from the Biden and Trump administrations, industry experts and people close to the campaigns.

Meta Oversight Board Voices 'Serious Concerns' About Election Moderation

Two weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the Oversight Board says it has “serious concerns” about Meta’s content moderation systems in “electoral contexts,” and that the company risks the “excessive removal of political speech” when it over-enforces its rules. The admonishment came as the board weighed in on a case involving a satirical image of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Meta Suspends Accounts Tracking Private Jets of Public Figures

The tech giant Meta suspended Instagram and Threads accounts tracking the flights of private jets owned by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, former president Donald Trump and other public figures, echoing a move by Elon Musk’s X to crack down on such accounts that drew criticism over social networks’ suppression of public data. The accounts drew from publicly broadcast flight data to post the takeoff and landing airports of planes used by Zuckerberg, Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) alongside estimates of the carbon dioxide emissions from each trip.

Dow Jones, New York Post Sue Perplexity for AI Copyright Infringement

News Corp‘s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have sued Perplexity, a startup that calls itself an “AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity,” alleging copyright infringement. “Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users accurate and up-to-date news and information in a platform that, in Perplexity’s own words, allows users to ‘Skip the Links’ to original publishers’ websites,” the companies said in the federal lawsuit.

Alabama Man Arrested for Hacking SEC's X Account

An Alabama man was arrested for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said. Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

U.S. Prosecutors Pursuing More Suspects Using AI to Create Child Porn

U.S. federal prosecutors are stepping up their pursuit of suspects who use artificial intelligence tools to manipulate or create child sex abuse images, as law enforcement fears the technology could spur a flood of illicit material. The U.S. Justice Department has brought two criminal cases this year against defendants accused of using generative AI systems, which create text or images in response to user prompts, to produce explicit images of children.

China's Cybersecurity Association Wants Security Review for Intel Products

Intel sold in China should be subject to a security review, the Cybersecurity Association of China (CSAC) said, alleging the U.S. chipmaker has "constantly harmed" the country's national security and interests. While CSAC is an industry group rather than a government body, it has close ties to the Chinese state and the raft of accusations against Intel, published in a long post on its official WeChat account, could trigger a security review from China's powerful cyberspace regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.