The massive data breach disclosed by retailer Target Corp last week is likely to teach its U.S. customers a painful lesson in payment card security and build support for an anti-fraud technology now sitting on the shelf. For years, U.S. merchants and banks have balked at adopting a well-established system that uses credit and debit cards that store information on computer chips.
A small company backed by "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest that makes an iPhone-compatible keyboard says a lawsuit filed against it by BlackBerry Ltd lacks merit. The company, Typo Products LLC, said it still plans to launch the product, which attaches to some of Apple Inc's touchscreen iPhone 5 models, at a trade show this week and to begin shipping the keyboards later this month.
Two Internet security firms have reported that Yahoo's advertising servers have been distributing malware to hundreds of thousands of users over the last few days. The attack appears to be the work of malicious parties who have hijacked Yahoo's advertising network for their own ends. "Clients visiting yahoo.com received advertisements served by ads.yahoo.com. Some of the advertisements are malicious," said Fox IT, a security firm based in the Netherlands.
In room-size metal boxes secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world. According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets.”
Two Facebook users are taking the company to court over claims it mines private messages for data that is then sold to third parties. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook scans messages between users labeled "private" for links and other information that can be sold to advertisers, marketers and data aggregators.
The Syrian Electronic Army, an amorphous hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for hacking into the social media accounts of Internet calling service Skype. The group also posted the contact information of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp's retiring chief executive, on its Twitter account along with the message, "You can thank Microsoft for monitoring your accounts/emails using this details. #SEA"
Amazon agreed to begin collecting sales tax in the three states in 2014 -- Indiana, Nevada and Tennessee -- bringing to 19 the states in which it automatically adds tax to purchases. Those 19 states have a combined population of roughly 180 million, more than half of U.S. residents.
The usernames and phone numbers for 4.6 million Snapchat accounts were temporarily posted online by hackers who took advantage of a previously disclosed vulnerability within the chat service. SnapchatDB.info allowed visitors to download the database of Snapchat user info, though the last two digits of the phone numbers were censored "in order to minimize spam and abuse."
Apple vehemently denied suggestions from a security analyst that the company may have helped the NSA to develop backdoor access to the iPhone. The statement came from security research Jacob Appelbaum, who revealed the existence of a secret program code-named DROPOUTJEEP by which the National Security Agency (NSA) appears to have nearly total access to the Apple iPhone.
A bitter battle between Apple Inc. and a lawyer appointed to monitor its compliance with a court antitrust ruling escalated, as the U.S. government and the monitor both hit back at Apple. Over the last two months, Apple has launched a broad legal attack on the monitor, Michael Bromwich, who was appointed by a federal judge after a ruling that the company conspired to fix e-book prices.
Google Inc. lost a bid for a rehearing before a federal appeals court that said the operator of the world’s most-used search engine must face claims that its Street View program violated federal wiretap law. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco amended and affirmed its ruling in September that the Wi-Fi network data collected by the company is covered by the privacy protections of the U.S. Wiretap Act.
A hacker secretly took over a computer server at the BBC, Britain's public broadcaster, and then launched a Christmas Day campaign to convince other cyber criminals to pay him for access to the system. While it is not known if the hacker found any buyers, the BBC's security team responded to the issue and believes it has secured the site, according to a person familiar with the cleanup effort.
The United States, the country that invented the Internet, is falling dangerously behind in offering high-speed, affordable broadband service to businesses and consumers, according to technology experts and an array of recent studies. In terms of Internet speed and cost, “ours seems completely out of whack with what we see in the rest of the world,” said Susan Crawford, a law professor at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, a former Obama administration technology adviser and a leading critic of American broadband.
In a report released by Torrent Freak, a blog that covers copyright and BitTorrent-related news, the hit HBO fantasy series “Game of Thrones” won the seat on the Iron Throne for being the most pirated television show in 2013. The piracy report noted that 327 million unique Internet users explicitly sought to download copyrighted content in January 2013 — 10 percent more than 15 months earlier — clicking on 13.9 billion web pages focused on pirated content.
Apple Inc. is again seeking to ban sales in the U.S. of Samsung Electronics Co. products that were at issue in the companies’ first patent trial in California and are now no longer on the market. The iPhone-maker asked U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose to bar sales of more than 20 smartphones and tablets, such as the Galaxy S 4G and Galaxy Tab 10.1, that a jury last year found to infringe Apple’s patents.
Apple Inc. has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars (US$670,000) and ordered to stop interfering with mobile service providers and handset distributors' pricing, Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission said. Apple can appeal but may face a fine up to NT$50 million if it doesn't comply, the commission said.
Hulu has failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the video streaming service of illegally sharing users' viewing history with Facebook Inc and business metrics company comScore Inc. In San Francisco, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler rejected Hulu's argument that viewers needed to show actual injury to recover damages, even if they qualified as "aggrieved" persons under a 1988 federal law protecting the privacy of video renters.
A consortium created by Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies to acquire $4.5 billion of patents from Nortel Networks Corp. in 2011 is holding discussions to sell a portion of those patents, according to people with knowledge of the plans. The group, called Rockstar Consortium, has recently been in conversations with possible buyers about the patents, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
Investigators believe that overseas hackers were responsible for the cyber attack on U.S. retailer Target Corp that compromised up to 40 million payment cards during the first three weeks of the holiday shopping season, a person familiar with the matter said. The person, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the matter, declined to say how the hackers got in or where investigators believe they are based, saying investigators don't want to show their hand to the criminals.
Three more defendants have been charged in connection with the Internet marketplace known as Silk Road, which prosecutors have described as a vast online black-market bazaar for drugs, guns and other illicit goods, authorities said. A federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan charges Peter Phillip Nash, who is described as the primary moderator on the Silk Road discussion forums; and two other men -- Andrew Michael Jones and Gary Davis, who were said to have worked as site administrators.
About : Legal Services | Doug Isenberg | Cases & Clients | Firm News
Resources : YouTube Channel | Daily News | Blog | Masterclass | Domain Dispute Digest
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.