A House of Representatives subcommittee sent a letter to Sony asking for information about the attack on the Sony Playstation Network by hackers. The letter, which was addressed to Mr. Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony, asked the company to answer a detailed list of questions related to the intrusion.
In the wake of a giant brouhaha over the news that Apple's iPhones record and store users' locations, Verizon Wireless says it will start slapping 'we can track you!' warning stickers on its products. Verizon's announcement came in the form of a letter to Representatives Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican.
Two women have filed a $50 million class-action lawsuit against Google Inc. to stop the company from selling phones with Android software that can track a user's location. The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, comes a week after Google acknowledged that phones running its Android software store some location data directly on phones for a short time from users who have chosen to use GPS services.
Jeff Moss, a prominent computer hacker who founded the annual Black Hat and DefCon security conferences in Las Vegas, has been hired as the chief security officer for the organization that coordinates names of the world's Web sites. "I can think of no one with a greater understanding of the security threats facing Internet users and how best to defend against them than Jeff Moss," Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's CEO and formerly the director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, said in a statement.
Mobile privacy safeguards should also extend to third party application developers, two lawmakers said after reviewing the practices of four major U.S. wireless carriers. Representatives Edward Markey and Joe Barton, co-chairs of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, released letters they received from Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile in response to their inquiries last month about the collection, use and storage of location data.
Telecommunications-equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co. has filed lawsuits against its biggest Chinese competitor, ZTE Corp., for patent infringement. Shenzhen-based Huawei accused ZTE of infringing a series of its patents related to wireless modems and high-speed fourth-generation technology, called Long Term Evolution, or LTE.
Samsung Electronics Co., the second-largest maker of mobile phones, broadened its patent- infringement dispute with Apple Inc. by suing the iPhone creator in the U.S. a week after making claims in Asia and Europe. Apple is infringing 10 patents related to mobile phones, Samsung said in a lawsuit in federal court in San Jose, California.
The hacker who has received widespread grassroots support after being sued by Sony for posting code that can jailbreak Sony PlayStation consoles blamed the company's recent data breach on executive-level arrogance. George Hotz is now barred from hacking Sony products, but he's still happy to blog about the company and point out what he sees as an institutional misunderstanding of the hacker culture.
Gamers and government officials are irate over Sony's admission that a massive security breach gave hackers access to large amounts of personal data from the company's PlayStation Network and, surprise(!), one gamer has already filed a lawsuit. Meanwhile, analysts estimate the hammered game company could lose billions of dollars from the debacle.
FBI agents have had trouble investigating cyber attacks involving national security because they lack the needed technical expertise or are often transferred or diverted to other cases, according to a government report. Sensitive government computer networks are under regular attack from hackers seeking to steal classified material or to cripple critical operations.
Small and medium-size businesses in the U.S. lost more than $11 million over the past year in online scams in which stolen banking credentials were used in fraudulent wire transfers to companies in China, the FBI said. There were 20 such incidents between March 2010 and April 2011, affecting companies and public institutions in the U.S. that tend to have accounts at local community banks and credit unions, some of which use third-party service providers for online banking services, according to the agency.
Hoping to put to rest a growing controversy over privacy, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, took the unusual step of personally explaining that while Apple had made mistakes in how it handled location data on its mobile devices, it has not used the iPhone and iPad to keep tabs on the whereabouts of its customers. Mr. Jobs said that Apple will fix the mistakes in a free software update that it will release in the next few weeks.
Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.” The new rules, quietly issued by the country’s Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list of criteria.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) said that those sites seized for trafficking in counterfeit and pirated goods will now serve to help spread the government's message that "unfairly devalue America's contributions, compromise American jobs, and put consumers, families, and communities at risk."
Amazon.com Inc., responding to a trademark lawsuit by Apple Inc. over its use of the words “App Store,” said the term is generic and denied that the iPhone maker has exclusive rights to the phrase. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, said it isn’t required to obtain a license or authorization to use “App Store” because the term is “unprotectable” and won’t be confused or unfairly compete with Apple’s App Store service, according to a filing in federal court in Oakland, California.
Sony acknowledged that the personal information of its PlayStation Network customers has been compromised. The company posted an update on its blog warning its more than 70 million customers that their personal information, including customer names, addresses, e-mail addresses, birthdays, PlayStation Network and Qriocity passwords, and user names, as well as online user handles, was obtained illegally by an "unauthorized person."
The main website for Ontario's courts is back online after being hacked by a group calling themselves “Turkish defacers.” The ministry of the attorney general temporarily pulled the plug on www.ontariocourts.ca following the electronic infiltration.
Like Apple and Google, Microsoft collects records of the physical locations of customers who use its mobile operating system. Windows Phone 7, supported by manufacturers including Dell, HTC, LG, Nokia, and Samsung, transmits to Microsoft a miniature data dump including a unique device ID, details about nearby Wi-Fi networks, and the phone's GPS-derived exact latitude and longitude.
A House committee that oversees privacy issues sent letters to six developers of mobile operating systems -- including Apple Inc. and Google Inc. -- seeking more information about whether they are tracking users' locations, as the scrutiny expands to the broader industry. In the version of the letter sent to Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked him to respond to questions such as: "What location data do devices running your operating system track, use, store, or share?" and "Why does the device track, use, store, or share that data?"
Google announced a program called the WebM Community Cross License initiative designed to dispel patent-related threats looming over freely usable video technology for the Web. Under the effort, members who join agree to license any WebM-related patents to each other, a move that offers mutual reassurance that the technology is royalty-free in practice as well as in Google's aspiration.
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