U.S. Attorney in N.Y. Investigating Bangladesh Bank Heist

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan has opened an investigation of the cyber heist of $81 million from Bangladesh Bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a law enforcement source said. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is investigating the February crime, in which criminals used the SWIFT fund-transfer network to steal money from Bangladesh's central bank.

'Spam King' Gets 30 Months in Prison for Targeting Facebook Users

Sanford Wallace, the self-proclaimed "spam king" who has bedeviled Web users since the dawn of the public Internet two decades ago, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution for bombarding Facebook users, according to court records. Wallace, 47 — also known as "Spamford" and the handle he preferred himself, "the Spam King" — pleaded guilty in August to electronic mail fraud and to criminal contempt of court, according to sentencing documents filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.

Hacker Targets ISIS Supporters' Accounts with Porn

For the past two months, and with increased fervor after an ISIS supporter attacked an Orlando gay night club over the weekend, Wauchula Ghost, a member of the hacking clan "Anonymous," has compromised hundreds Twitter accounts of Islamic State supporters and flooded them with pornography. “Daesh doesn’t like porn,” Ghost said in a phone interview, referring to the Islamic State in its Arabic transliteration.

Regulators in Asia Increase Efforts for Cybersecurity

Losses from data breaches are particularly steep in Asia because regulations on cybersecurity and disclosure lag those in the West, say cybersecurity experts. Now, regulators across some markets including Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore are moving to tighten personal data protection guidelines and are stepping up enforcement of privacy rules as cyberattacks grow more costly.

French Police Killer's Use of Facebook Live Draws Criticism

After Larossi Abballa killed a French police commander and the commander's partner, he took to Facebook Live to encourage viewers in a 12-minute video to follow his example: Kill prison staff, police officials, journalists, lawmakers. The incident underscores the immense challenges companies such as Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google's YouTube face as they push live video streaming to hundreds of millions of people.

Russian Government Hackers Attack Democratic Committee

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach. The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts.

Appeals Court Upholds Net Neutrality Regulations

A federal appeals court has voted to uphold a series of strict new rules for Internet providers, handing a major victory to regulators in the fight over net neutrality and ensuring that one of the most sweeping changes to hit the industry in recent years will likely remain on the books. The 2-1 court ruling forces Internet providers such as Verizon and Comcast to obey federal regulations that ban the blocking or slowing of Internet traffic to consumers.

Aviation Panel Reaches Preliminary Agreement on Cybersecurity

A panel of government and aviation-industry experts has reached a preliminary agreement on proposed cybersecurity standards for airliners, including the concept of cockpit alerts in the event that critical safety systems are hacked, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the recommendations, these people said, incorporate work already under way to create an entirely new category of automated in-flight warnings—intended to directly notify pilots if navigation signals are jammed or corrupted.

Supreme Court Ruling Helps Patent Owners Win Damages

The Supreme Court made it easier for patent holders to win larger financial damages in court from copycats who use their inventions without permission. The high court, in a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, overturned a specialized appellate court that had adopted a hard-to-meet legal standard for winning punitive damages, even in cases where the defendant’s patent infringement was willful.

After Orlando Shooting, Facebook Activates 'Safety Check'

Facebook activated its “Safety Check” function for the first time in the United States after a gunman massacred 50 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The Safety Check, first introduced in October 2014, allows Facebook users to spread the word that they are safe in wake of a natural disaster or a crisis, and allows searches for those who might be in the affected area.

Court Lets Model's Rape Case Against Website Proceed

A woman who used a website that connects freelance models to casting agents, photographers and others in the business is looking to sue ModelMayhem.com for failure to warn users of potential rapists on their website. A court ruling granted her the right to move forward with the trial, a decision which brings up questions of whether websites can be held legally accountable for sexual assaults that happen to their users in the offline world.

Company Claims New Way to Prevent Cyberattacks

Most security start-ups seeking funding today have resigned themselves to the inevitability of a breach and are focused more on identifying an attack as it plays out and praying that they can respond before the perpetrator makes off with something important. It’s as if everyone in the cybersecurity industry forgot that customers pay them to keep from being hacked in the first place.

Twitter Warns Millions of Users to Change Passwords

Twitter Inc. has notified millions of users that their accounts are at risk of being taken over after a database containing nearly 33 million purported usernames and passwords for the social-blogging service was made public. Michael Coates, Twitter’s trust and information security officer, said the company is “quite confident” that the records weren’t stolen from Twitter’s computers.

Subscribe

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.