Thanks to successful botnet shutdowns, the amount of spam oozing through the Internet has dropped considerably over the past year, driving the overall percentage of unwanted email messages to depths unseen since 2006. Phishing, however, is on the rise, according to Symantec's June 2011 "State of Spam & Phishing Report."
The Pentagon is about to roll out an expanded effort to safeguard its contractors from hackers and is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace to test new technologies, according to officials familiar with the plans, as a recent wave of cyber attacks boosts concerns about U.S. vulnerability to digital warfare. The twin efforts show how President Barack Obama's administration is racing on multiple fronts to plug the holes in U.S. cyber defenses.
Software widely used in China to help run weapons systems, utilities and chemical plants has bugs that hackers could exploit to damage public infrastructure, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The department issued an advisory warning of vulnerabilities in software applications from Beijing-based Sunway ForceControl Technology Co that hackers could exploit to launch attacks on critical infrastructure.
In the past, companies were typically caught off guard when a breach occurred and responses were often flat-footed, requiring updates and further clarifications to concerned customers. Now an industry of experts -- including lawyers, public-relations specialists and forensic investigators -- has emerged to help companies determine what to disclose and how to reassure victims.
The Citigroup credit card data breach exposed the private financial data of more than 360,000 customer accounts, about 80 percent more than it earlier reported, according to a statement the bank released. Previously, Citigroup said that more than 200,000 cardholders, or about 1 percent of its 21 million North American cardholders, were affected.
Oracle is seeking damages "in the billions of dollars" from Google in a patent lawsuit over the smartphone market, according to a court filing. The disclosure was the first time either side publicly mentioned the cumulative scale of Oracle's damages claims.
Microsoft warned people in the U.S. of a phone scam offering free computer help. Callers have been posing as computer engineers and calling people at home, telling them that their home computers are vulnerable to a security threat.
LulzSec, the hacker group that came to light in early June, continued its Internet rampage on by posting the details of about 62,000 random usernames and passwords.
Lulz Security, the hacker group that recently attacked the U.S. Senate, Sony and PBS, said on Twitter that its taken down the website for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Shortly after LulzSec sent the message on Twitter, the CIA's website was unable to load in multiple attempts on multiple browsers.
Lodsys, a group that's targeted companies big and small for infringing on its patents, is now in the crosshairs of a company offering to pay a bounty for research that seeks to invalidate those patents. Article One Partners, a business that crowdsources intellectual property research, has launched three new studies into patents held by Lodsys.
A Chinese court sentenced three people to prison terms for collaborating to steal information from a key supplier regarding Apple Inc.'s iPad 2 several months before its release, the latest outcome from leaks about products made by the technology giant. The Shenzhen Bao'an People's Court, in announcing its decision, said the head of a Chinese electronics-accessories manufacturer allegedly paid a former employee and a then-active employee of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. for information about the iPad 2 in order to produce protective cases for the device.
Dolby International, a unit of audio equipment maker Dolby Laboratories Inc., is suing Research In Motion Ltd. for patent infringement in the U.S. and Germany. Dolby alleges that RIM's Blackberry smartphones and Playbook tablet devices use its patented digital audio compression technology, which enables the playback of high-quality audio files using limited amounts of storage space, without a license.
Two senators proposed a mobile privacy bill, in response to a furor over the news that Apple and Google devices can track and store users' location information. The so-called "Locationgate" kicked off in April, after two British researchers released an open source application that let Apple's customers see the location data stored on their iPhones and 3G iPads.
U.S. antitrust enforcers have given Google Inc. the go-ahead to pursue its $900 million opening bid for a trove of high-tech patents being sold by Canadian telecommunications-equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp., people familiar with the matter said. After an antitrust review, the Justice Department concluded that Google's potential ownership of the patents wouldn't raise any major competitive concerns, these people said.
Four consumer protection organizations, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), have filed a complaint with the United States Federal Trade Commission over Facebook's use of facial recognition technology. The complaint states that the process creates an image identification system under the social networking giant's sole control.
A juror, who contacted a defendant via Facebook, has admitted contempt of court in the first case of its kind in the UK involving the internet. London's High Court heard that Joanne Fraill, 40, contacted Jamie Sewart, 34, who had already been acquitted in a drugs trial costing £6m in Manchester.
It may take the U.S. Supreme Court to end a years-long battle between a pair of Olympic rowing twins and Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has lost a court ruling that he hoped would lead to the end of litigation by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who accused him of stealing their idea for the world's most popular social networking website.
Nokia Oyj won an almost two-year patent dispute with Apple Inc., in a settlement that awards a one-time payment and royalties to the Finnish handset maker. The two mobile-phone makers have been in litigation since October 2009, when Nokia filed a lawsuit accusing Cupertino, California-based Apple of infringing patents.
Amazon has shut down its affiliates program in Connecticut and Arkansas over the controversial issue of collecting state taxes. The company announced the move in letters to affiliates, noting that contracts with all Connecticut residents who participate in the Amazon Associates Program would be terminated effective immediately, while contracts with affiliates in Arkansas will be terminated on July 24.
The Turkish police have detained 32 members of Anonymous, a collective of professed activists, on suspicion of planning attacks on a number of Web sites, the Turkish state-run news agency Anatolian reported. The action came in response to a complaint from Turkey’s directorate of telecommunications, whose Web site was taken down as part of a protest against what Anonymous says is government censorship of the Internet.
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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.