Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. and Bats Global Markets Inc., two of the three biggest operators of U.S. stock exchanges, said access to their websites was disrupted by attacks that flooded their systems with traffic. Trading systems at both companies were unaffected, according to Nasdaq’s Joseph Christinat and Stacie Fleming of Bats.
A team of European and American mathematicians and cryptographers have discovered an unexpected weakness in the encryption system widely used worldwide for online shopping, banking, e-mail and other Internet services intended to remain private and secure. The flaw — which involves a small but measurable number of cases — has to do with the way the system generates random numbers, which are used to make it practically impossible for an attacker to unscramble digital messages.
While many celebrated Valentine’s Day, hackers celebrated a different holiday: the one-year anniversary of the uprising in Bahrain, sometimes called the February 14 Revolution. They attacked Combined Systems, a company based in Jamestown, Pa., saying that the attack was in retaliation for sales by the company of chemical weapons “to repress our revolutionary movements.”
Leading U.S. senators plan to introduce a cybersecurity bill aimed at safeguarding the nation's water and power systems, which experts have warned often only have the most rudimentary protections against hackers. Senators John Rockefeller and Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats; Susan Collins, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, an independent, have drafted a comprehensive bill that would require the secretary of homeland security to designate certain infrastructure as critical and compel steps to safeguard against hackers.
A Chinese tech firm that claims it still owns the iPad trademark will seek a ban on exports of Apple Inc's computer tablets from China, which could deal a blow to the U.S. technology giant's sales worldwide. Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd is petitioning Chinese customs to stop shipments of Apple's popular iPads in and out of China, but has not received a response, lawyer Xie Xianghui told Asian Legal Business.
For nearly a decade, hackers enjoyed widespread access to the corporate computer network of Nortel Networks Ltd., a once-giant telecommunications firm now fallen on hard times. Using seven passwords stolen from top Nortel executives, including the chief executive, the hackers -- who appeared to be working in China -- penetrated Nortel's computers at least as far back as 2000 and over the years downloaded technical papers, research-and-development reports, business plans, employee emails and other documents, according to Brian Shields, a former 19-year Nortel veteran who led an internal investigation.
The Justice Department approved Google's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, clearing the way for the biggest acquisition in Google's history, and its transition to a company that builds both hardware and software, like its fierce rivals Apple and Microsoft. With a host of tech giants battling each other in court over the intellectual property that underlies smartphones and the software that runs them, the department's Antitrust Division also approved patent purchases by Apple, Microsoft and Research In Motion.
Apple said that it had asked an outside organization to conduct special audits of working conditions inside Chinese factories where iPhones, iPads and other Apple products are manufactured. And in a significant about-face for the company that has the potential to affect the electronics industry, Apple asked the organization to identify particular facilities where abuses are discovered.
Microsoft said it was investigating an attack by hackers on its Indian retail website, reportedly carried out by a Chinese group called the "Evil Shadow Team."
The U.S. government is seeking software that can mine social media to predict everything from future terrorist attacks to foreign uprisings, according to requests posted online by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In a formal “request for information” from potential contractors, the FBI recently outlined its desire for a digital tool to scan the entire universe of social media — more data than humans could ever crunch.
The Obama administration proposed hiring more prosecutors to pursue intellectual property crimes in the new budget as the entertainment industry pressures the Justice Department to crack down on copyright infringement and counterfeiting. The Justice Department asked Congress for $5 million to hire 14 new employees, including nine attorneys, to focus on intellectual property crimes.
Apple’s battle over the rights to use the ‘iPad’ name in China entered a new phase after dozens of iPads were confiscated from retailers in a northern Chinese city. An inspection team under the Xinhua District Administration of Industry and Commerce in Shijiazhuang, an industrial city roughly a four-hour drive southeast of Beijing, confiscated 45 iPads last week after receiving a trademark violation complaint from Shenzhen-based Proview Technology, the state-run Hebei Youth Daily newspaper reported.
Amid controversy over its plans to combine user data from search to YouTube, Google told the Federal Trade Commission in a self-assessment report that the upcoming changes in its privacy policy are fully in compliance with the company’s settlement with the federal government last year. The report — delivered to the FTC in January — lays out the steps the company has taken internally to make sure it complies with the FTC’s consent decree finalized in November over the firm’s privacy policies.
Many Iranian web users say their access to foreign email services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail appears to have been restored after a four day outage. The semiofficial Mehr agency had said that more than 30 million people in the country were affected by the outage.
Google won unconditional EU regulatory approval for its planned $12.5 billion purchase of mobile handset maker Motorola Mobility. But the European Commission said it would monitor the company and rivals' use of patents to ensure they comply with EU antitrust rules.
An attempt to block Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make Brazil the first country to take Twitter up on its plans to censor content at governments' requests.
A hacker claims to have compromised the personal information of more than 350,000 users after breaking into a disused website operated by pornography provider Brazzers. Kate Miller, director of communications for site owner Manwin Holding SARL, said it was "currently investigating the issue" but that no credit card information has been leaked.
Tens of thousands of protesters took part in rallies across Europe against an international anti-piracy agreement they fear will curb their freedom to download movies and music for free and encourage Internet surveillance. More than 25,000 demonstrators braved freezing temperatures in German cities to march against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) while 4,000 Bulgarians in Sofia rallied against the agreement designed to strengthen the legal framework for intellectual property rights.
Security researchers said they found a vulnerability in the Google Inc mobile payments platform which is currently available in phones sold by Sprint Nextel Corp. The alleged vulnerability in the Google Wallet was identified by Joshua Rubin, a senior engineer with zvelo, a closely held security firm in Greenwood Village, Colorado.
Having seen social media help power uprisings across the Middle East, Iran’s leaders are trying to get control over what is uploaded, posted and discussed on the Internet. And after a slow start, authorities are becoming more and more successful, Iranian Internet users say. Many fear that the disabling of the software used to bypass the state-run firewall heralds the coming of what authorities have labeled the National 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.