Russian authorities arrested a large number of suspects in May in connection with the recently revealed electronic theft of $19 million from accounts held at the Russian central bank, an official said. The bank said that hackers had this year used fake client credentials to steal money from correspondent accounts -- used to handle transactions on behalf of another bank -- at the Bank of Russia.
A senior German conservative has warned Facebook it could face fines if it fails to act faster to tackle online hate speech, and he said the government could propose legislative measures in the new year. Speaking at a party conference of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) in Essen, western Germany, Volker Kauder suggested politicians were running out of patience with efforts by social media providers to crack down on hate speech.
European officials pushed for American technology giants to do more to tackle online hate speech across the region, adding to the chorus of policy makers worldwide demanding greater action from the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter. The rebuke came a day after many of those companies announced that they were joining forces to fight the spread of terrorist content on the internet, agreeing to share technology and information to prevent propaganda and other dangerous materials from being disseminated on their services.
Makers of the Snuggie blanket and other products sold mainly on TV have sued Amazon.com Inc, accusing the internet retailer of trademark infringement for letting an "astronomical" number of counterfeit products to be sold through its website. The lawsuit was filed by Allstar Marketing Group LLC, Ideavillage Products Corp and Ontel Products Corp, which respectively sell such products as the Snuggie, Copper Fit compression sleeves and Magic Tracks toy racetracks through so-called "As Seen on TV" advertising.
President-elect Donald Trump has invited technology industry leaders to a roundtable next week in New York. The tech industry, which bet heavily on Hillary Clinton in the months leading up to the presidential election, is looking to build bridges to the incoming administration.
Instagram announced that it would be providing more tools for users to protect themselves and others from online abuse by allowing them to remove comments and filter out certain followers. The ability to remove comments will be an add-on to previous efforts: About three months ago, Instagram announced that it would allow users to filter out abusive words from their comments, and the platform has been experimenting with comment removal on high-profile accounts since this summer.
The Supreme Court ruled that Samsung's violation of Apple's smartphone design patents can involve only a component, rather than the entire product -- a decision that means Samsung may not have to pay penalties reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The unanimous decision from Justice Sonia Sotomayor reasoned that the patent infringement could affect just a component of the phones, such as their appearance, rather than all their capabilities.
A federal judge has dismissed a suit against The Home Depot that had been pegged to a widespread and high-profile data breach two years ago, according to the Daily Report. U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Thrash, sitting in Atlanta, said company’s top management, as well as its board of directors did try to address the weaknesses in its online and data security, “even if the steps they took in hindsight proved to be inadequate,” the Daily Report said.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether a company that sells its printer cartridges subject to a bar on their reuse or resale can invoke patent law against a company that violates the restriction. At issue is whether the restrictions imposed by Lexmark International bypass the general rule that a patent holder’s rights extend only to the first sale of its product.
Web giants YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft will step up efforts to remove extremist content from their websites by creating a common database. The companies will share "hashes" -- unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos -- of extremist content they have removed from their websites to enable their peers to identify the same content on their platforms.
Congress has passed a law protecting the right of U.S. consumers to post negative online reviews without fear of retaliation from companies. The bipartisan Consumer Review Fairness Act was passed by unanimous consent in the U.S. Senate, a Senate Commerce Committee announcement said.
Police in Thailand arrested a student pro-democracy activist for sharing a story about the country's new king that was posted on Facebook by the Thai-language service of the BBC. The arrest was apparently the first under the country's tough lese majeste law since King Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun took the throne, succeeding his late father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
In two letters sent to AT&T and Verizon, the FCC writes that sponsored data plans from the telecom giants are a threat to net neutrality. Under the programs, customers can use select services without having them contribute to a data cap — a practice known as zero rating.
A presidential commission made 16 urgent recommendations to improve the nation’s cybersecurity, including creating a nutritional-type label to help consumers shop wisely and appointing a new international ambassador on the subject — weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The release of the 100-page report follows the worst hacking of U.S. government systems in history and accusations by the Obama administration that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election by hacking Democrats.
Online credit companies and paperless lenders would be able to get federal charters to do their business nationwide under a plan outlined by a U.S. banking regulator. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the main regulator for federal banks, said it hoped offering a charter for "fintech" companies would spur innovation in the banking sector.
Hackers have stolen more than 2 billion roubles ($31.3 million) from banks' correspondent accounts in Russian central bank, the central bank official Artyom Sychyov told a briefing. He added that hackers attempted to stole around 5 billion roubles.
A botnet that has served up phishing attacks and at least 17 different malware families to victims for much of this decade has been taken down in a coordinated effort by an international group of law enforcement agencies and security firms. Law enforcement officials seized command and control servers and took control of more than 800,000 Internet domains used by the botnet, dubbed "Avalanche," which has been in operation in some form since at least late 2009.
Hidden code that tracked visitors to a child sex abuse image website has been discovered by its members. The script in the site targeted visitors using the anonymising web browser Tor and sent information about their computers to a server in France.
Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has been ordered to surrender records on customers' trades in the virtual currency to the IRS as part of a tax-avoidance probe. A federal judge in San Francisco granted the agency's request for a so-called "John Doe" summons to compel Coinbase to identify all users in the U.S. who conducted transactions between 2012 and 2015.
State-sponsored hackers have conducted a series of destructive attacks on Saudi Arabia over the last two weeks, erasing data and wreaking havoc in the computer banks of the agency running the country’s airports and hitting five additional targets, according to two people familiar with an investigation into the breach. Saudi Arabia said after inquiries from Bloomberg News that “several” government agencies were targeted in attacks that came from outside the kingdom, according to state media.
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