Cyber security is the biggest risk facing the financial system, the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said, in one of the frankest assessments yet of the threat to Wall Street from digital attacks. Banks around the world have been rattled by a $81 million cyber theft from the Bangladesh central bank that was funneled through SWIFT, a member-owned industry cooperative that handles the bulk of cross-border payment instructions between banks.
The Bank of England ordered UK banks to detail steps taken to secure computers connected to the SWIFT bank messaging network about two months after a still-unidentified group used the system to steal $81 million from Bank Bangladesh, according to three people familiar with the effort. The central bank sent the request to update cyber security measures to all banks it regulates in mid-to-late April, according to these people, who were not authorized to discuss the confidential communications.
A LinkedIn hack from back in 2012 is still causing problems for its users. The company announced this morning that another data set from the hack, which contains over 100 million LinkedIn members’ emails and passwords, has now been released.
Chinese authorities are quietly scrutinizing technology products sold in China by Apple and other big foreign companies, focusing on whether they pose potential security threats to the country and its consumers and opening up a new front in an already tense relationship with Washington over digital security. Apple and other companies in recent months have been subjected to reviews that target encryption and the data storage of tech products, said people briefed on the reviews who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A federal judge has rejected Mozilla Corp's request to force the U.S. government to disclose a vulnerability related to the Firefox web browser that the company says was exploited by the FBI to investigate users of a large and secretive child pornography website. U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan in Tacoma, Washington, declined to allow Mozilla to intervene in a case against a school administrator charged in the investigation, Jay Michaud.
A Ukranian hacker pleaded guilty to stealing unpublished news releases that helped a criminal network make $30 million by trading on nonpublic information about corporate earnings. Vadym Iermolovych, 28, admitted in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, that he worked with two other Ukranian hackers to steal 150,000 releases from computer networks at PR Newswire, Business Wire and Marketwired.
Google faces a record-breaking fine for monopoly abuse within weeks, as officials in Brussels put the finishing touches to a seven-year investigation of company’s dominant search engine. It is understood that the European Commission is aiming to hit Google with a fine in the region of €3bn, a figure that would easily surpass its toughest anti-trust punishment to date, a €1.1bn fine levied on the microchip giant Intel.
A key plaintiff in a driver class action against Uber said he does not support a proposed settlement in which thousands of drivers would receive up to $100 million, but remain independent contractors instead of employees. Uber and smaller rival, Lyft, are attempting to settle lawsuits by drivers who contend they should be classified as employees and therefore entitled to reimbursement for expenses, including gasoline and vehicle maintenance.
Over the past two years, a group of cybercriminals has infected almost 1 million computers with malware that hijacks search results, even when they're served over encrypted HTTPS connections. The click-fraud botnet earns its creators money through Google's AdSense for Search program, according to researchers from security firm Bitdefender.
It's a little difficult to nail down the US presidential candidates on cybersecurity. That's probably because none of the candidates actually has a cybersecurity plan.
A Brooklyn magistrate judge has rejected the Justice Department’s practice of getting gag orders against technology companies, saying federal agents should have to give a specific reason why customers of Facebook and other firms shouldn’t be told when the government searches their data. U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein denied 15 separate government applications for gag orders against service providers, writing in a ruling that they lacked enough information for him to judge whether the secrecy was warranted.
An anti-counterfeiting group said it was suspending Alibaba Group Holding Inc's membership following concerns raised by some of its member companies. The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) statement follows an AP report that the group's president, Robert Barchiesi, had stock in Alibaba and that he used family members to help run the coalition.
Almost half of American households with at least one Internet user have been "deterred" from online activity recently because of privacy or security concerns, a survey has said. Their concerns had stopped them either using online banking or shopping or posting on social media, the survey by a Department of Commerce agency said.
Paul Grewal, a magistrate judge in San Jose federal court, is leaving his post there to join social network Facebook as deputy general counsel in charge of litigation. Grewal, who confirmed the move to Recode, has been on the bench since 2010.
New details about a second attack involving Swift — the messaging system used by thousands of banks and companies to move money around the world — are emerging as investigators are still trying to solve the $81 million heist from the central bank of Bangladesh in February. The second attack involves a commercial bank, which Swift declined to identify.
A group of hackers that cyber-security experts say targets critics of the Russian government has been trying since April to attack the computer systems of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party, a security research firm said. Researchers at Trend Micro said the hackers, called Pawn Storm, appear to be trying to steal personal and corporate data from the CDU and high-profile individuals using two free email services.
VoIP-Pal announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, Nevada, seeking over $2.8 billion in damages for alleged infringement of its patented Internet communication technologies. VoIP-Pal has over a dozen issued or pending patents, primarily related to VoIP technologies, a few of which it accuses Apple of infringing upon with services like FaceTime and iMessage on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
A group of senior U.S. and China cyber officials held its first meeting since the two countries struck an anti-hacking agreement in September to try to ease years of acrimony over the issue. The so-called Senior Experts Group on International Norms and Related Issues is expected to gather twice a year, the U.S. State Department said in a statement announcing the meeting.
Federal Trade Commission officials are asking questions again about whether Google has abused its dominance in the Internet search market, a sign that the agency may be taking steps to reopen an investigation it closed more than three years ago, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Senior antitrust officials at the FTC have discussed the matter in recent months with representatives of a major U.S. company that objects to Google's practices, according to sources with the company.
Europe’s biggest software company, SAP, is the subject of a U.S. security alert over a vulnerability the firm disabled six years ago that can still give outside attackers remote control over older SAP systems if the software is not properly patched. SAP fixed the issue, but left the decision over whether to switch off an easy access setting up to its customers, who may sometimes place a higher priority on keeping their business-critical SAP systems running than on applying security updates.
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