The FBI and an international coalition of law enforcement officials have taken down a ring of at least 12,000 hijacked computers worldwide, which cyber crooks used to launch cyberattacks and steal sensitive data. The connected computers are known as the Beebone botnet.
U.S. officials are blocking technology exports to facilities in China associated with the world’s fastest supercomputer, a blow to Intel Corp. and other hardware suppliers that adds to the list of tech tensions between the two countries. Four technical centers in China associated with the massive computer known as Tianhe-2 have been placed on a U.S. government list of entities determined to be acting contrary to U.S. national security or foreign-policy interests.
Eleven channels associated with the French-language global television network TV5Monde went black due to an "extremely powerful cyberattack," the network's director said. In addition to its 11 channels, TV5Monde also temporarily lost control of its social media outlets and its websites, director Yves Bigot said in a video message posted later on Facebook.
Rand Paul's presidential announcement on YouTube was blocked by the video streaming site, thanks to a copyright claim from Warner Music Group. During his announcement on Tuesday, Rand Paul entered and left to the song, "Shuttin' Detroit Down," as Business Insider notes.
A U.S. appeals court appeared skeptical toward Google Inc's bid to charge Microsoft Corp a high royalty rate to use some of the Internet search provider's Motorola Mobility patents. Microsoft sued Motorola in 2010, alleging Motorola breached its commitment to license some of its industry standard patents on fair terms.
Hacking attacks that destroy rather than steal data or that manipulate equipment are far more prevalent than widely believed, according to a survey of critical infrastructure organizations throughout North and South America. The poll by the Organization of American States found that 40 percent of respondents had battled attempts to shut down their computer networks, 44 percent had dealt with bids to delete files and 54 percent had encountered “attempts to manipulate” their equipment through a control system.
Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. While the White House has said the breach only ever affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion.
Getty Images has dropped its lawsuit against Microsoft over alleged “massive” copyright infringement, announcing a plan to amicably bring Getty’s photos to Microsoft’s Internet search engine and devices. Getty sued Microsoft last September in federal court in Manhattan, claiming the software company’s online photo tool, the Bing Image Widget, displayed copyrighted photos supplied by its Bing search engine without payment or attribution.
Two Turkish academics appealed a court order that allowed authorities to block access to Twitter and YouTube for several hours this week, a crackdown they say reflects Ankara's growing authoritarianism. Turkey has taken a tough stance on social media under President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party he founded.
Prominent consumer and child advocacy groups will ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google's new YouTube Kids application, arguing that the search engine giant is unfairly and deceptively targeting toddlers with advertising on tablets and smartphones. "This is the opening shot in a new battle with Google, Nickelodeon, Amazon, Netflix, Cartoon Network and others that are trying to cash in on this generation of young children," said Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy.
The U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division announced its first prosecution specifically targeting Internet commerce, saying a man has agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to illegally fix the prices of posters he sold online. David Topkins was accused of conspiring with other poster sellers to manipulate prices on Amazon.com Inc's Amazon Marketplace, a website for third-party sellers, from Sept. 2013 to Jan. 2014, according to papers filed in San Francisco federal court.
For those who have spent more than a decade fighting for stricter regulation of the Internet, the official publication of the rules in the Federal Register will give reality to their latest victory. For those opposed, it is likely to touch off a flurry of lawsuits.
Twitter has complied with Turkey's request to remove photographs of an Istanbul prosecutor held at gunpoint by far-left militants, an official said, and a ban on the micro-blogging site was lifted, several hours after it was imposed. Turkish authorities banned access earlier on Monday to Twitter and YouTube after an Istanbul judge imposed a block on access to social media sites showing photographs of slain prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz held at gunpoint by far-left militants and taken hours before he was killed in a shootout last week.
A Brooklyn woman scored a judge’s approval to legally change her relationship status to “single” via Facebook. In a landmark ruling, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper is allowing a nurse named Ellanora Baidoo to serve her elusive husband with divorce papers via a Facebook message.
Jay Edelson's class-action law firm started suing technology companies in the early 2000s, before data privacy was a national debate. Mr. Edelson claims to have won more than $1 billion in settlements in all, a number that is difficult to confirm because many of those agreements are private.
The European Union is weighing a major investigation into how Internet platforms like Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. operate in Europe, amid concerns that such companies have too much power over smaller firms . The investigation, proposed in an internal EU discussion paper seen by The Wall Street Journal, comes amid a flurry of other probes into various U.S. tech companies, whose dominance of Europe’s online landscape is causing deep concern in top policy circles.
Samsung convinced U.S. regulators to review whether two of Smartflash’s patents should have been issued in the first place. If a review board at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tosses those patents, it will not only benefit Samsung but also Apple -- the company it spent four years battling over smartphone technology on four continents.
Apple is not able to launch its new smartwatch in Switzerland until at least the end of this year because of an intellectual property rights issue, Swiss broadcaster RTS reported on its website. The U.S. tech giant cannot use the image of an apple nor the word "apple" to launch its watch within Switzerland, the home of luxury watches, because of a patent from 1985, RTS reported, citing a document from the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.
Plaintiffs in an antitrust lawsuit against Google Inc. withdrew their case accusing the search engine company of harming smartphone buyers by forcing handset makers using Android operating system to make Google's own applications the default option. The lawsuit argued that Google requires Android handset manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. favor Google's apps such as YouTube and restrict competing apps like Microsoft Corp's Bing search.
In a first-of-its-kind prosecution, the convicted operator of a “revenge porn” website was sentenced to nearly 18 years in prison, officials announced. Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 28, of San Diego, was found guilty in February on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft for running a website that posted nude photos of individuals, as well as identifying information, without their consent, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris.
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