Cyber attacks on Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong billionaire who controls Next Media Ltd., led to the disclosures of e-mails with details of his donations to lawmakers, his spokesman said. Lai faced attacks from computers in China mirroring the “same effort and complexity” that led to Next Media’s websites going down in June, said Mark Simon, spokesman for the Hong Kong-based company.
In another sign that China is aiming at Microsoft, the government warned the company not to interfere with its antitrust investigation, days after officials conducted surprise raids on four of the software firm’s offices across the country. The harsh warning, using terminology rarely seen in commercial cases and normally reserved for China’s most challenging political nemeses, like Japan and the Dalai Lama, signals how seriously Beijing is taking the inquiry at a time of rising tensions between China and the United States over spying and economic issues.
Google's controversial practice of scanning emails and analyzing users' emails for targeted ads reportedly led to the arrest of a 41-year-old Houston man who has been charged with possessing and promoting child pornography. According to a local TV station news report, Google detected a Houston man using Gmail allegedly to send explicit images of a "young girl" to his friend.
Cyber security researcher Ruben Santamarta says he has figured out how to hack the satellite communications equipment on passenger jets through their WiFi and inflight entertainment systems -- a claim that, if confirmed, could prompt a review of aircraft security. Santamarta, a consultant with cyber security firm IOActive, is scheduled to lay out the technical details of his research at this week's Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, an annual convention where thousands of hackers and security experts meet to discuss emerging cyber threats and improve security measures.
Facebook users outside the United States and Canada can now join in an Austrian’s class-action lawsuit against Facebook that seeks damages for data sharing, analysis of users, and other practices. Activist Max Schrems has filed the suit at the Commercial Court for Vienna, according to a statement issued by the website europe-v-facebook.org.
Microsoft Corp. sued Samsung Electronics Co., claiming its Korean rival violated a patent-licensing contract. The dispute involves technology included in Android, Google Inc.'s operating system for mobile phones and tablets.
Apple Inc. won preliminary approval of a settlement in which it could pay $450 million to resolve claims by U.S. states and consumers that it led a conspiracy to fix prices on electronic books. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan said that there’s “probable cause to find that the proposed settlement agreement is within the range of those that may be approved as fair and reasonable.”
Twitter released its bi-annual transparency report, detailing the number of requests for information the company receives from government agencies around the world. Twitter received 2,058 requests for user account information from a total of 54 different countries over the last six months, the company said, a 46 percent increase in requests from its previous report.
Google says complying with Europe’s so-called right to be forgotten ruling is getting complicated. In a lengthy response to questions from the region’s data regulators, the search giant said that it often lacked enough information to decide whether it should remove links to web pages to comply with European law.
USB devices such as keyboards, thumb-drives and mice can be used to hack into personal computers in a potential new class of attacks that evade all known security protections, a top computer researcher revealed. Karsten Nohl, chief scientist with Berlin's SR Labs, noted that hackers could load malicious software onto tiny, low-cost computer chips that control functions of USB devices but which have no built-in shields against tampering with their code.
China's foreign ministry accused Canada of making irresponsible accusations lacking any credible evidence after Canada singled out Chinese hackers for attacking a key computer network and lodged a protest with Beijing. Officials said "a highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor" had recently broken into the National Research Council.
A federal judge said that Microsoft can't prevent the U.S. Department of Justice from obtaining emails stored in a data center overseas in a case that has raised concern among Internet privacy groups and technology companies. Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ordered Microsoft to comply with a December warrant allowing the DOJ to obtain a customer's email-account data stored in Dublin, Ireland.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is questioning Verizon Wireless’ decision to slow connection speeds for certain customers during times of peak network congestion. In a letter to the carrier, Wheeler pronounced himself “deeply troubled” by Verizon’s plans to slow connection speeds for a subset of its subscribers -- those with older, unlimited data plans -- during times when the network is experiencing high demand.
European regulators are preparing what could be a stern challenge to Google Inc.'s mobile software business in the coming months after a nearly four-year investigation into the company's Web search practices left rivals and European politicians dissatisfied. Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said that with a new antitrust chief taking over in November, European regulators are laying the groundwork for a case centered on whether Google abuses the 80 percent market share of its Android mobile operating system to promote services from maps to search.
Russia has proposed that Apple Inc. and SAP hand the government access to their source code to make sure their widely used products are not tools for spying on state institutions. The suggestion that two of the world's flagship technology companies disclose some of their most sensitive business secrets comes as the United States and Europe debate their most severe sanctions yet against Russia for its role in Ukraine.
Tor, the Internet privacy protecting service, said it discovered a compromise on its network that indicated somebody was trying to monitor the activity of its users. "While we don't know when they started doing the attack, users who operated or accessed hidden services from early February through July 4 should assume they were affected," Tor said in a blog entry.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter he would support “any Open Internet rules” passed by U.S. regulators, language welcomed by supporters of strict rules opposed by telephone and cable companies. The pledge gives the Federal Communications Commission political cover to regulate Web services like a utility, rather than relying on less robust rules that allow for so-called fast lanes on the Internet, said David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, a Takoma Park, Maryland-based policy group that received the letter.
A international consortium of consumer privacy groups is urging regulators in the U.S. and the European Union to prevent Facebook from tapping its users’ Internet browsing histories to target ads. In a letter sent to Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and to Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue expressed “deep alarm” about Facebook’s plans.
A Chinese regulator said it is conducting an anti-monopoly investigation into Microsoft Corp. over its Windows operating system, in the latest in a growing number of competition probes that have unnerved Western firms in China. China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce (SAIC) was also investigating a Microsoft vice president and senior managers, and had made copies of the firm's financial statements and contracts, the agency said on its website.
The City of London police has started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally. The messages, which will appear instead of paid-for ads, will ask users to close their web browsers.
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