Wired magazine reports on how it engaged two hackers to see if they could take control of a Jeep Cherokee from the comfort of their living room while writer Andy Greenberg sat nervously at the wheel while the SUV cruised the highway at 70 mph. The security experts, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, accessed the Jeep's computer brain through its Uconnect infotainment system and rewrote the firmware to plant their malicious code.
Some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies are backing Samsung in its patent war with Apple. A coalition of huge firms including Facebook, Google, HP, Dell, and eBay are asking a U.S. appeals court to review a decision forcing Samsung to turn over full profits for Galaxy products found to infringe on Apple patents.
Costco Wholesale Corp., Sam's Club and a handful of other large retailers have disabled their online photo printing stores in recent days, on concerns about a possible data breach at PNI Digital Media, which manages and/or hosts photo services sites. Last week CVS Health Corp disabled its CVSphoto.com site, and the week before Walmart Canada's walmartphotocentre.ca took a similar action after it was informed that customer credit card data had been potentially compromised.
It's easy to make a mistake when you book a hotel reservation online. In fact, scammers and dishonest businesses are counting on it. "Just because a webpage looks like the official site of your favorite hotel chain doesn't mean it is," the Federal Trade Commission warned in a recent blog post.
Major technology trade groups applauded a breakthrough at the World Trade Organization that would eliminate tariffs on hundreds of tech products not covered by previous deals. The WTO said the agreement would cover tariffs on 200 products that account for nearly $1 trillion in trade per year.
A Spanish judge has asked Europe's top court if online taxi-hailing app Uber is a "mere transport service" or a digital service, as the U.S. start-up claims, in a case that could set a precedent for legal battles across the continent. A judge in Barcelona has referred a case brought by the city's main taxi operator against Uber towards the end of last year to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg, an Uber executive said.
Casual sex and cheating network Ashley Madison has reportedly been hacked, compromising the user databases, financial records, and private details of the service's owners and 37 million users. Security researcher Brian Krebs first reported the leak, which was subsequently confirmed by Noel Biderman, the CEO of Avid Life Media.
China's central bank issued guidelines promoting the development of Internet finance, saying it would support "qualified" financial institutions to set up platforms for online banking, insurance and securities businesses. It added it would encourage high-performing and qualified internet finance firms to list.
Xiaomi international head Hugo Barra said that the Chinese electronics company is looking to file more patents and strike more deals ahead of a launch into the U.S. market. The move is essential if Xiaomi really wants to play in the U.S. and Europe, where intellectual property issues are taken seriously.
University of California (UCLA) Health, which runs four hospitals in the university's campuses, and drug retailer CVS Health Corp.'s CVSphoto.com became the latest victims of cyber attacks. UCLA Health said that data on as many as 4.5 million individuals was at potentially at risk, although it added it had not yet found evidence that individuals' personal or medical information was actually accessed or acquired during the breach.
A U.S. judge ruled that online television service FilmOn X LLC should be treated like a traditional cable system in order to transmit the programs of the nation's broadcasters over the Internet. The ruling, coming as consumer TV-watching habits are increasingly migrating to the Internet, is the first to first to view a streaming service like a cable provider and could have major implications for broadcasters if it is upheld by higher courts.
The European Union’s top court set limits on the ability of mobile-phone makers owning key industry patents to use court injunctions to thwart competitors seeking to use the technology in their own equipment. Huawei Technologies Co. and other mobile-phone makers that own a so-called standard-essential patent can go to court seeking to bar rivals from using it -- or to ban their products -- only if they have met strict conditions, the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled.
United Airlines confirmed it had rewarded two people with 1 million free miles of air travel each for discovering and disclosing software defects through the airlines "bug bounty" program. (With those 1 million miles, they could fly from the continental United States to Europe 33 times.)
Google is expanding its Google Patents website to make it easier to thwart frivolous lawsuits without paying a high-priced lawyer. The searches are free, and can be used by inventors to see if their idea has merit before filing an application, or for companies that have been threatened with a patent suit and want some idea of what they’re up against.
Google Inc. won the dismissal of a lawsuit by Android users who said the company violated its own privacy policy by disclosing their names, email addresses and account locations to third parties without permission, to boost advertising revenue. In a decision, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California, said the users failed to show that Google transmitted their own personal data or that they would suffer economic harm if it occurred.
The European Commission announced two antitrust investigations into the chip maker Qualcomm, the latest in a number of recent competition inquiries that have targeted United States technology giants. Europe’s antitrust officials said they would investigate whether Qualcomm, one of the world’s largest chip makers, abused its dominant market position in the region by offering financial incentives to potential customers if they bought equipment solely from the American company.
The White House is kick-starting a new push, called ConnectHome, to connect low-income Americans to high-speed Internet. Under the program, which is being announced by President Obama, hundreds of thousands of families and school-age kids will get Web access and computer training.
The Labor Department has waded into a heated workplace issue with fresh guidance on how businesses should distinguish between employees and independent contractors. So-called employee misclassification has become a hot topic recently as the economy has changed and hundreds of growing businesses such as Uber Technologies turn increasingly to contract workers.
U.S. authorities working with law enforcement partners abroad have shut down the Darkode online forum used by cybercriminals around the world and charged 12 people linked to the site, the Justice Department said. U.S. Attorney David Hickton announced the charges in Pittsburgh and called Darkode "a cyber hornet's nest of criminal hackers."
Two months after discovering that sensitive personal information on 21.5 million Americans was compromised in a hack of government databanks, none of those affected has been officially notified, government officials said. The officials from multiple agencies, who are familiar with an investigation into the breach, said the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversaw the data, is working with other agencies to set up a system to inform the victims.
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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.