To the FBI, Evgeniy M. Bogachev is the most wanted cybercriminal in the world. The bureau has announced a $3 million bounty for his capture, the most ever for computer crimes, and has been trying to track his movements in hopes of grabbing him if he strays outside his home turf in Russia.
Waymo, the self-driving car business spun out of Google’s parent company last year, asked a federal court to block Uber’s work on a competing self-driving vehicle that Waymo claimed could be using stolen technology. Waymo also filed testimony from employees and a Google security engineer describing how Anthony Levandowski, a former Google executive, discussed Uber’s interest in the technology and systematically stole proprietary company documents.
The Securities and Exchange Commission denied an application for the first exchange-traded fund that would track the price of bitcoin, a high-profile rejection for the digital currency and the Winklevoss brothers behind the proposal. The bitcoin industry had been hoping an exchange-traded product would make the currency attractive to Wall Street and retail investors.
In 2015 Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that prohibited California police and other state agencies from searching our phones and online accounts without our consent, a court order, or showing it is an emergency. That measure, the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, affords Californians basic Fourth Amendment protections when it comes to digital data. But a bill now before the state legislature would take away those rights from students and staff at California’s public schools.
The feud between Oculus and ZeniMax Media is opening back up once again, this time with the CTO of Oculus, John Carmack, suing his former employer for earnings that he claims are still owed to him. The suit is largely unrelated to the $6 billion trade secrets suit which ended last month with a $500 million judgment against Oculus. Instead Carmack is suing Zenimax Media for $22.5 million that he says has not been paid to him for the 2009 sale of his game studio, id Software, known for such pioneering video game classics as Doom and Quake.
Wikileaks will provide technology companies with exclusive access to CIA hacking tools that it possesses so they can patch software flaws, founder Julian Assange said, presenting Silicon Valley with a potential dilemma on how to deal with the anti-secrecy group. If the offer is legitimate, it would place technology companies in the unusual position of relying on Assange, a man believed by some U.S. officials and lawmakers to be an untrustworthy pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to share cyber vulnerabilities stockpiled by a secretive U.S. spy agency.
Republicans in the U.S. Congress are moving to repeal regulations adopted by the Obama administration in October that would have subjected internet service providers to stricter scrutiny than websites to protect customers' private data. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona introduced a resolution backed by 34 other senators to undo the regulations under a provision that allows Congress to repeal recently approved federal regulations.
Tech companies must rapidly step up information-sharing to protect users from prying eyes, a security software executive said after WikiLeaks released a trove of data purporting to show that the CIA can hack all manner of devices. Dozens of firms rushed to contain the damage from possible security weak points following the anti-secrecy organization's revelations, although some said they needed far more information on what the U.S. intelligence agency was up to before they could thwart suspected but previously hidden attacks.
Democrats grilled the new Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, at his first hearing before Congress since taking over the agency. In his first month on the job, Chairman Ajit Pai has quickly begun rolling back a number of Obama-era initiatives and regulations, and faced tough questions from Dems at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing.
Confide, a messaging app reportedly used by U.S. White House staff, apparently had several security holes that made it easier to hack. Security consultancy IOActive found the vulnerabilities in Confide, which promotes itself as an app that offers “military-grade” end-to-end encryption.
WikiLeaks released thousands of documents that it said described sophisticated software tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions. If the documents are authentic, as appeared likely at first review, the release would be the latest coup for the anti-secrecy organization and a serious blow to the C.I.A., which maintains its own hacking capabilities to be used for espionage.
ZTE Corp. has agreed to pay as much as $1.2 billion for violating U.S. laws restricting the sale of American technology to Iran, ending a year of uncertainty about its ability to do business in the world’s biggest economy. The agreement with the U.S. government calls for the company to pay $892 million in fines and forfeitures and be subject to an additional $300 million in penalties if it violates the terms of the settlement.
Doppler Labs, the California startup behind the Here One earbuds that can warp the sounds of your surrounding environment, is suing audio titan Bose for alleged trademark infringement and what it deems “unfair and deceptive business practices.” At the center of the allegations are the Hearphones, a pair of in-ear headphones that Bose quietly launched last year and is only currently selling in “limited quantities” in three of its retail stores across the country.
In a letter sent to FCC chairman Ajit Pai, as well as Senators John Thune and Bill Nelson, over 170 groups ask Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to continue to support and protect the net neutrality rules put into place in 2015. “[We] urge you and your colleagues to oppose legislation and regulatory actions that would threaten net neutrality and roll back the important protections put in place by the FCC in 2015 and to continue to enforce the Open Internet Order as it stands,” the groups write.
Amazon dropped its fight against a subpoena issued in an Arkansas murder case after the defendant said he wouldn’t mind if the technology giant shared information that may have been gathered by an Amazon Echo smart speaker. James Andrew Bates has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Victor Collins, who was found dead in a hot tub at Bates’ home. In paperwork, Bates said Amazon could share the information and Amazon said it handed over material.
Facebook has been criticized for its handling of reports about sexualized images of children on its platform. The chairman of the U.K. Commons media committee, Damian Collins, said he had "grave doubts" about the effectiveness of its content moderation systems.
Russian hackers are targeting U.S. progressive groups in a new wave of attacks, scouring the organizations’ emails for embarrassing details and attempting to extract hush money, according to two people familiar with probes being conducted by the FBI and private security firms. At least a dozen groups have faced extortion attempts since the U.S. presidential election, said the people, who provided broad outlines of the campaign.
Facebook Inc has suspended its location-sharing feature in Italy after a Milan court ruled last year that the social networking giant had violated competition and copyright laws by effectively copying a similar app from a local start-up. Italian software developer Business Competence filed a lawsuit in 2013, accusing Facebook's Nearby feature of having copied its Faround application, which helps users locate Facebook friends in the vicinity.
Google faced another regulatory challenge when the authorities in Turkey opened an investigation into whether the search giant’s popular Android software had broken the country’s antitrust rules. The investigation in Turkey is the latest legal problem for Google, which faces three separate competition charges in Europe and has already been found to breach antitrust legislation in Russia.
A federal jury in Kansas City, Kan., awarded Sprint $139.8 million in a patent infringement lawsuit against Time Warner Cable. Sprint had sued Time Warner in 2011, arguing that the cable company had infringed on a number of patents that dealt with handling telephone calls through data networks rather than expensive traditional switching equipment.
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