Yahoo's European regulator said it is preparing to give the U.S. Internet firm the results of an investigation into the 2014 theft of data from 500 million users, including possible remedial action to avoid a repeat of the breach. Yahoo said in September last year that hackers had stolen the data in 2014, prompting criticism from U.S. politicians into the delay in notifying customers.
Germany is trying to beef up its cyber defense, after the interior minister called for rules that allow nations to attack foreign hackers targeting critical infrastructure. Europe’s biggest economy is currently evaluating whether it needs to draft new legislation to ensure its security forces are legally cleared to defend the country against cyber attacks that target, for example, its electricity infrastructure, according to Thomas de Maiziere.
Hackers are targeting the growing population of third-party sellers on Amazon.com Inc., using stolen credentials to post fake deals and steal cash. In recent weeks, attackers have changed the bank-deposit information on Amazon accounts of active sellers to steal tens of thousands of dollars from each, according to several sellers and advisers.
Past cyber attacks on scores of organizations around the world were conducted with top-secret hacking tools that were exposed recently by the Web publisher Wikileaks, the security researcher Symantec Corp. said. That means the attacks were likely conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Acting on an FBI request, the police in Spain arrested a man this weekend named Peter Levashov, according to Russian news media reports and Reuters, citing a Russian Embassy spokesman in Madrid. Western cybersecurity researchers have identified Mr. Levashov as Peter Severa, though some doubt he is the same person.
Hackers accessed the data of up to 100,000 people through a tool that helps students get financial aid. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the Senate Finance Committee that a breach had been discovered in the fall.
Dallas officials blame computer hacking for setting off emergency sirens throughout the city. Rocky Vaz, director of Dallas' Office of Emergency Management, said that all 156 of the city's sirens were activated more than a dozen times.
Customs and Border Protection withdrew its demand that Twitter unmask the anonymous account, a day after the social media company sued the government to block the summons. The person or people behind the account, @ALT_USCIS, had claimed to be a current employee of Citizenship and Immigration Services and had regularly posted messages at odds with White House policy.
Facebook Inc.'s virtual reality unit Oculus VR is facing a lawsuit alleging it incorporated without authorization a smaller competitor's patented technology into its Rift headset. Techno View IP Inc., a Newport Beach, California-based technology licensing firm, sued Facebook and Oculus for infringing a 3D imaging patent owned by the VR headset maker ImmersiON-VRelia.
An Australian regulator is suing Apple Inc. over software which disabled iPhones and iPads that had been serviced outside Apple stores after users downloaded updates. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleges Apple violated Australia’s consumer law by shutting down or “bricking” the devices, and then telling customers the company wouldn’t fix the problem at no cost because their devices had been previously serviced by third-party providers.
Twitter is suing the Trump administration after it tried to compel the social media site to reveal the identity of an account that had been tweeting criticism of the president. In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Twitter revealed that the Department of Homeland Security in March had demanded that the company reveal who is behind @ALT_USCIS, an anonymous account that has been raising alarms about U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Trump’s immigration policies.
Alphabet Inc's YouTube said it would place ads on channels only if they reach 10,000 views as it tries to weed out people who make money on the site by stealing content from other sources. The video streaming service also said once a video channel crosses the threshold, it would review the content to see if it qualifies for the placement of ads.
A group of Senate Democrats is asking top telecom companies to provide details of their privacy policies in the wake of Republicans’ repeal of broadband privacy rule. The senators, led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), sent letters containing a list of questions about privacy to AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and CenturyLink.
New York State’s highest court dealt a blow to Facebook and other social media companies seeking to expand privacy protections, ruling that Facebook had no right to ask an appellate court to quash search warrants ordering the company to hand over information from hundreds of accounts in a disability fraud case. The state Court of Appeals, in a 5-to-1 decision, with one judge recusing himself, upheld lower court rulings that New York law does not allow a social media company to appeal a judge’s decision to issue search warrants in a criminal case, even if the company believes those warrants violate the constitutional rights of its users.
Facebook Inc. is adding tools to make it easier for users to report so-called "revenge porn" and to automatically prevent the images from being shared again once they have been banned, the company said. "Revenge porn" refers to the sharing of sexually explicit images on the internet, without the consent of the people depicted in the pictures, in order to extort or humiliate them.
Amazon.com Inc. can begin refunding as much as $70 million to consumers for in-app purchases made by children, following the end of a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC said it and the Seattle-based retailer agreed to end appeals related to a federal court decision last year that found Amazon was liable for in-app purchases children made over the course of about five years without their parents’ authorization due to the lack of sufficient safeguards.
Google anticipates that new guidance on H-1B visas will not affect its own employees, according to an email obtained by Recode. “Wanted to quickly weigh in on behalf of the immigration team to let you all know that we’re following this and for now, don’t anticipate an impact to Googlers,” says the email to Google staff from an employee in human resources.
Foreigners who want to visit the U.S., even for a short trip, could be forced to disclose contacts on their mobile phones, social-media passwords and financial records, and to answer probing questions about their ideology, according to Trump administration officials conducting a review of vetting procedures. The administration also wants to subject more visa applicants to intense security reviews and have embassies spend more time interviewing each applicant.
Google and a group of top Android phone makers have sealed a new agreement to collectively defend themselves against patent lawsuits. The group, which also includes Samsung, LG, and HTC, have agreed to share patents covering “Android and Google Applications” on any device that meets Android’s compatibility requirements.
After his press secretary blasted it as an example of rampant government overreach, President Donald Trump signed a bill into law that could eventually allow internet providers to sell information about their customers' browsing habits. The bill scraps a Federal Communications Commission online privacy regulation issued in October to give consumers more control over how companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon share that information. Critics have argued that the rule would stifle innovation and pick winners and losers among internet companies.
About : Legal Services | Doug Isenberg | Cases & Clients | Firm News
Resources : YouTube Channel | Daily News | Blog | Masterclass | Domain Dispute Digest
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.