The Federal Communications Commission voted to change the definition of broadband Internet to connection speeds of 25 megabits per second or higher, up from the previous standard of 4 megabits. FCC commissioners voted on the definition as part of the agency’s 2015 Broadband Progress Report. If speeds do not reach the new threshold, a connection cannot be listed as “broadband.”
Facebook Inc. is being quizzed by Hamburg’s privacy watchdog amid concerns the social network giant’s revamped user-data policies may violate German law. Facebook was given until the end of the next month to respond to questions on the data handling and may face a probe if it fails to allay concerns, the regulator, Johannes Caspar, said in Berlin.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is embroiled in a rare, high-stakes public dispute with a powerful Chinese government agency that is accusing the e-commerce giant of allegedly failing to crack down on the sale of fake goods, bribery and other illegal activity on its sites. The government’s accusations are in a white paper just made public by China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce but based on conversations between the agency and Alibaba company officials in July.
The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of dollars’ worth of business in China. The new rules, laid out in a 22-page document approved at the end of last year, are the first in a series of policies expected to be unveiled in the coming months that Beijing says are designed to strengthen cybersecurity in critical Chinese industries.
The increasing incidents of cybercrime is sparking European executives’ interest in insurance policies that cover the fallout from hacking, officials at insurance firms say in Europe say. Demand for such protection is rising, said Jens Krickhahn, a cyber-risk expert at German insurer Allianz. Read the article: The Wall Street Journal
Mexico's federal transparency body said it had initiated proceedings to impose sanctions on the Mexican unit of Google Inc for possible breach of the country's data protection law. The Federal Institute for Information Access and Data Protection (IFAI) said it had taken the step following a request from an unidentified person who had asked Google Mexico to erase his personal data from the search engine and to stop using it.
In a public advisory, the FCC said it is "aggressively investigating and acting" against businesses that illegally interfere with Wi-Fi. The agency's Enforcement Bureau said it has noticed a "disturbing trend" in which hotels and other businesses block personal Wi-Fi hot spots.
Taylor Swift’s Twitter and Instagram accounts were hacked, a noticeable breach given Swift is the fourth most-followed tweeter on the planet with more than 51 million followers. Messages tweeted from her account encouraged those on Twitter to follow @Lizzard, the self-proclaimed leader of the hacker group Lizard Squad, the folks behind multiple attacks on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live.
As consumers increasingly adopt devices that can collect information and transmit it to the Internet, the Federal Trade Commission called on technology companies that sell those products to institute comprehensive measures to protect users’ data security and privacy. “The only way for the Internet of Things to reach its full potential for innovation is with the trust of American consumers,” Edith Ramirez, the chairwoman of the FTC, said in a statement.
The French government is stepping up the pressure on Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. to help in the struggle against terrorist groups. President Francois Hollande said in Paris the government will present a draft law next month that makes Internet operators “accomplices” of hate-speech offenses if they host extremist messages.
Cut off from the Internet, young Cubans have quietly linked thousands of computers into a hidden network that stretches miles across Havana, letting them chat with friends, play games and download hit movies in a mini-replica of the online world that most can't access. Home Internet connections are banned for all but a handful of Cubans, and the government charges nearly a quarter of a month's salary for an hour online in government-run hotels and Internet centers.
Facebook Inc. denied being the victim of a hacking attack and said its site and photo-sharing app Instagram had suffered an outage after it introduced a configuration change. The disruption “was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems,” a Facebook spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal.
Hackers are opening new horizons: having learned how to break into Apple Inc.’s iPhones they may target smart televisions next, according to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. In the future, hackers will be able to interfere with smart TVs -- the latest generation of TVs that are connected to the Internet -- and require users to send a paid text message to get them unlocked, Chief Executive Officer Eugene Kaspersky said in an interview.
A group calling itself "Official Cyber Caliphate" said it hacked the official website of national carrier Malaysia Airlines (MAS), but the airline said its data servers remained intact and passenger bookings were not affected. In a statement, MAS said the website was not hacked, but that users were redirected to a hacker website.
Google took almost three years to disclose to the open information group WikiLeaks that it had handed over emails and other digital data belonging to three of its staffers to the U.S. government, under a secret search warrant issued by a federal judge. WikiLeaks has written to Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, to protest that the search giant only revealed the warrants last month, having been served them in March 2012.
To avoid being banned throughout Turkey, Facebook has blocked Turkish users’ access to a number of pages containing content that the authorities had deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad, according to a company employee with direct knowledge of the matter and a report by the state broadcaster TRT. The company acted to comply with an order from a Turkish court, the employee said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the company had not authorized the employee to speak publicly.
Law enforcement is concerned that the popular Waze mobile traffic app by Google Inc., which provides real-time road conditions, can also be used to hunt and harm police. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck complained in a letter to Google's chief executive on Dec. 30 that Waze could be "misused by those with criminal intent to endanger police officers and the community."
Beijing censors disrupted Virtual Private Networks, thereby preventing Internet users in China from accessing websites blocked by censors. Global Times, a Communist Party-run newspaper, confirmed that Chinese authorities caused the disruptions and justified the moves.
User names and passwords of 20 million visitors to an unidentified dating site have been hacked and offered for sale on a website, according to a posting by the thief on an online forum used by cybercriminals. Hackers can use the credentials to try to access bank accounts, health records or other more sensitive data, said Daniel Ingevaldson, chief technology officer of fraud-detection software-maker Easy Solutions Inc.
Allegations that Chinese authorities hacked into Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook email service are "groundless slander", the official Xinhua news agency quoted Beijing's cyberspace regulator as saying. The comments, made by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) spokesman Jiang Jun, were in response to a report by an online censorship watchdog which said that Chinese users of the email service were subject to a hacking attack over the weekend.
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