The federal organization overseeing the administration of funds from the 2008 bailout has cracked down on alleged scams that used Bing and Yahoo to lure vulnerable homeowners with ads for bogus mortgage modification deals. The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or SIGTARP, shut down 85 alleged online mortgage scams that advertised with Google and targeted struggling homeowners.
Federal investigators are looking into a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility's water pump in central Illinois, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on a U.S. industrial system. The Nov. 8 incident was described in a one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, according to Joe Weiss, a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks.
A technology company is suing Motorola Mobility, alleging that the mobile device manufacturer stole source code for its cellular networks and phones. Lemko Corp. filed suit against Motorola Mobility in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawsuit is the latest twist in a convoluted and protracted court battle between Lemko and Motorola Inc., which split into two independent public companies in January.
In a copyright lawsuit, Universal Music Group says it has obtained e-mails and other records that show Grooveshark's leaders led an effort to post over 100,000 pirated songs onto the music service, CNET has learned. "[The business records of Escape Media Group, Grooveshark's parent company,] establish unequivocally," Universal's lawyers wrote in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, "that the sound recordings illegally copied by Escape's executives and employees, include thousands of well known sound recordings owned by UMG."
The tide seems to have turned against the Stop Online Piracy Act, as both Nancy Pelosi and Darrell Issa have come out against passage. Congress, Republican California Rep. Darrell Issa said, is “realizing there are so many unintended consequences that they can’t just use Google as a piñata and bash on it here.”
Samsung Electronics Co. said it will release a modified version of its Galaxy tablet computer in Germany, two months after a court barred the company from selling the devices in Europe's biggest economy on the grounds it copied Apple Inc.'s iPad. The decision to release a modified version of the Galaxy reflects the South Korean electronics giant's eagerness to begin selling its tablet device in Germany ahead of the year-end shopping season, especially given the apparent weakness of the global economic recovery.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to debate wide-ranging cybersecurity legislation during the first work period of 2012, according to backers of the measures. Reid told Republican leaders of his decision in a letter late on Wednesday night, the top members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee said in a statement.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he would hold a hearing to look into reports that Facebook tracks its users on the Web after they log out. "No company should track customers without their knowledge or consent, especially a company with 800 million users and a trove of unique personal data on its users," Rockefeller said in a statement.
One of the largest purveyors of pornography on the Web has filed suit to block or overhaul the new dot-xxx suffix on Internet addresses, accusing organizations that assign online addresses of running a monopoly that creates unnecessary costs. The lawsuit was filed by Luxembourg-based Manwin Licensing International SARL, which owns a network of websites including YouPorn.com and manages Playboy Enterprises Inc.'s brand on the Web, along with adult filmmaker Digital Playground Inc.
Rambus Inc lost a $4 billion antitrust lawsuit against Micron Technology Inc and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, erasing more than half of the chipmaker's value as investors abandoned its stock. Rambus attorneys argued that South Korea's Hynix and Idaho-based Micron colluded to fix prices of memory chips used in personal computers and to prevent Rambus technology from becoming widely used. Read the article: Reuters
European Union regulators started an antitrust probe into Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc.’s use of smartphone patents on their “own initiative” without waiting for a competitor to formally raise the issue. Per Hellstroem, the head of the European Commission’s antitrust unit for consumer electronics, said in London that the EU’s “preliminary investigation” is trying to determine the underlying facts about phone makers’ use of patents.
The fight between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over proposed anti-piracy legislation is heating up on Capitol Hill. At a congressional hearing, Michael O'Leary, senior executive vice president for the Motion Picture Assn. of America, Hollywood's chief lobbying arm, urged lawmakers to move swiftly to pass a bill that would make it easier to shut down rogue websites that traffic in pirated movies and TV shows.
Facebook said that it has stopped most of the spam that has flooded many users' pages with pictures showing graphic sex and violence. The social-networking company urged its 800 million-plus users to remain vigilant to keep their accounts from being hijacked.
Facebook users report that for the social networking site has been infested with a mix of hardcore pornographic images, doctored pictures of celebrities in sexual situations, photos of extreme violence, and yes, a picture of a beaten dog. Now, Facebook says it has identified the problem -- but not the culprit. In a statement, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes acknowledged that the site was the target of a coordinated spam attack and explained how it went down.
A Google+ page that appeared to be the online home of Bank of America has for the past seven days advertised the company's "new" slogan: "We took your bailout money and your mortgage rates are going up." The page was a fraud, of course -- but a fraud the giant bank has allowed to exist for the past week, since Google unveiled pages for businesses and products on its new social network. How such a thing could slip past the attention of the country's second biggest bank by assets is anyone's guess, said Chester Wisniewski, a senior security adviser for security firm Sophos Labs.
Several leading Internet companies are voicing strong concerns with House and Senate legislation to curb online piracy, saying the measures would impose new burdens that could stifle their industry's innovation and growth. AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga Game Network wrote the top leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees about the bills introduced by the chairmen of both panels.
U.S. officials urged China to address network-security and privacy concerns of Western companies, saying the rise of network-based services conflicts with Chinese restrictions and its treatment of user data. Global companies hope to include China and other countries as they add to their so-called "cloud-computing" services, which store and share documents and other data on networks of remote computer servers.
A legitimate secondhand marketplace for digital music has never been tried successfully, in part because few people think of reselling anything that is not physical. But last month a new company, ReDigi, opened a system that it calls a legal and secure way for people to get rid of unwanted music files and buy others at a discount.
Three U.S. senators are asking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to investigate recent reports that Internet-monitoring gear made by two California-based companies has found its way to Syria. In a letter, the senators ask Clinton to investigate reports that devices made by NetApp and Blue Coat Systems were sold to Syria in a possible violation of U.S. law.
Iranian officials admitted that they had uncovered evidence of the Duqu computer virus -- labeled "Son of Stuxnet" by cyber experts -- at the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites, state-controlled IRNA news agency reported. "We are in the initial phase of fighting the Duqu virus," Gholamreza Jalali, was quoted as saying.
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