Dish Network and EchoStar Corp will pay TiVo Inc $500 million to settle a patent infringement lawsuit involving TiVo's video recording technology, putting an end to a long and costly legal battle. Dish and EchoStar, both controlled by Charlie Ergen, will make an initial payment of $300 million to TiVo, with the remaining $200 million to be paid in six equal annual installments between 2012 and 2017, the companies said in a statement.
Less than a week after news of a security breach sparked an uproar, Sony Corp. has shut down its online-gaming unit after a hacker infiltrated the network in the second such attack on the company in the last month. Sony Online Entertainment, known for creating massive multi-player games such as EverQuest and The Matrix Online, suspended service, according to a statement.
Scammers are distributing fake security software aimed at the Mac by taking advantage of the news that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has been killed by U.S. forces, a security researcher said. A security firm that specializes in Mac software called the move "a very big step forward" for malware makers targeting Apple's users.
Two weeks since after Sony's PlayStation Network was hacked Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, addressed the issue in a press conference in Tokyo. Though they still don't know who orchestrated the intrusion on the PSN servers in San Diego, Calif., they were "very sophisticated," Hirai said.
The ongoing battle between Amazon.com and Texas over whether the world's largest Internet retailer should collect sales taxes has drawn the attention of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Amazon said in a regulatory filing that the SEC is looking into its dispute with Texas, which began last year when the Texas comptroller's office sent Amazon a $269 million assessment for four years of uncollected sales taxes.
The hacker group Anonymous has its next denial-of-service (DoS) target in sight: Iran, CNET has learned. Members of the loosely organized group are planning "Operation Iran," an attack designed to shut down Iranian Web sites, according to their latest online proclamation.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is preparing an investigation of Google Inc.’s dominance of the Internet search industry by alerting high-tech companies to gather information for the probe, three people familiar with the matter said. The agency told the companies that it plans to issue so-called civil investigative demands for the information, said the people, who requested anonymity because the FTC hasn’t made the matter public.
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.
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