Cyber security firm Symantec Corp. said it was "highly likely" a hacking group affiliated with North Korea was behind the WannaCry cyber attack this month that infected more than 300,000 computers worldwide and disrupted operations at hospitals, banks and schools across the globe. Symantec researchers said they had found multiple instances of code that had been used both in the North Korean group's previous activity and in early versions of WannaCry.
John L. Steele, a Chicago lawyer already indicted for his role in the Prenda Law shakedown scheme targeting downloaders of online porn, has been disbarred. The criminal and professional actions against Steele arose out of his actions through the firms of Steele Hansmeier PLLC, Prenda Law and other associated business entities to use the courts to allegedly orchestrate “an elaborate scheme to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars in copyright lawsuit settlements by deceiving state and federal courts throughout the country,” according to federal prosecutors.
United Nations experts investigating violations of sanctions on North Korea have suffered a "sustained" cyber attack by unknown hackers with "very detailed insight" into their work, according to an email warning seen by Reuters. The hackers eventually breached the computer of one of the experts on May 8, the chair of the panel of experts wrote in an email to U.N. officials and the U.N. Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee, known as the 1718 committee.
Russian cyber criminals used malware planted on Android mobile devices to steal from domestic bank customers and were planning to target European lenders before their arrest, investigators and sources with knowledge of the case told Reuters. Their campaign raised a relatively small sum by cyber-crime standards -- more than 50 million roubles ($892,000) -- but they had also obtained more sophisticated malicious software for a modest monthly fee to go after the clients of banks in France and possibly a range of other western nations.
A small Boston company, founded by the inventor of a popular corporate encryption technology called RSA SecurID, sued Apple and Visa, arguing that the Apple Pay digital payment technology violates its patents. The lawsuit, filed by Universal Secure Registry in Federal District Court in Delaware, says that its chief executive, Kenneth P. Weiss, received 13 patents for authentication systems that use a smartphone, biometric identification such as a fingerprint and the generation of secure one-time tokens to conduct financial transactions.
The U.S. Supreme Court put sharp new limits on where patent-infringement lawsuits can be filed, undercutting patent owners’ ability to channel cases to favorable courts. The justices unanimously ruled in favor of TC Heartland LLC, an Indiana-based maker of water flavorings that said a Kraft Heinz Co. unit shouldn’t be allowed to sue it in Delaware.
A week after it struck, the WannaCry ransomware attack appears to have been a financial bust for the hackers who launched it. But WannaCry left behind billions in losses for users and a deep sense of vulnerability among data security experts who fear that worse attacks are yet to come.
Read the article: Boston Globe
Companies without cyber insurance are dusting off policies covering kidnap, ransom and extortion in the world's political hotspots to recoup losses caused by ransomware viruses such as "WannaCry", insurers say. Cyber insurance can be expensive to buy and is not widely used outside the United States, with one insurer previously describing the cost as $100,000 for $10 million in data breach insurance.
Vine as we once knew it has already been shut down, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean the information you provided to the Twitter-owned company is secure. Twitter just sent out a mass email to Vine users alerting them of a “bug” that briefly allowed third parties to view email addresses and phone numbers associated with Vine accounts.
A federal judge dismissed two lawsuits accusing Facebook Inc. of supporting terrorist groups by letting them use its social media platform to further their aims, including violence against Jews. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn dismissed a lawsuit brought on behalf of roughly 20,000 Israeli citizens and a lawsuit by family members and the estates of victims of attacks by Hamas.
The Republican-led Federal Communications Commission voted to begin undoing a key decision from the Obama era. The move highlights the uphill battle for Democrats and consumer advocates, who say that weaker rules could allow Internet service providers to abuse their position as gatekeepers between customers and the rest of the Internet.
Restaurant search service Zomato has revealed that millions of its customer accounts were accessed, with email addresses and hashed passwords stolen. Zomato, which claims 120 million users each month, said that around 17 million accounts are affected, though it has asserted that financial information and other personal details remain safe.
European Union antitrust regulators fined Facebook 110 million euros ($122 million) for giving misleading information during a vetting of its deal to acquire messaging service WhatsApp in 2014. Calling it a "proportionate and deterrent fine", the European Commission, which acts as the EU's competition watchdog, said Facebook had said it could not automatically match user accounts on its namesake platform and WhatsApp but two years later launched a service that did exactly that.
U.S. social network Facebook is set to be penalized by EU antitrust regulators for allegedly providing misleading data related to its WhatsApp acquisition three years ago, a person familiar with the matter said. The move by the European Commission will come after a six-month investigation and is expected to be a stiff warning to other companies facing similar issues.
Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. filed a lawsuit against four Apple Inc. contract manufacturers, including Foxconn Technology Group, for not paying royalties, as its legal battle with the iPhone maker intensifies. The other manufacturers listed in the filing by Qualcomm were Pegatron Corp., Wistron Corp. and Compal Electronics Inc.
Ukraine put in place new sanctions seeking to block Russian media and online networks from operating in the country, including VKontakte, the nation’s most popular social network. The decision, signed by President Petro Poroshenko, was announced in an updated sanctions list, which included the Russian search giant Yandex, social media sites like Odnoklassniki, and a number of Russian state and private television channels.
Without any fanfare, the Senate Sergeant at Arms recently told Senate staffers that Signal, widely considered by security researchers and experts to be the most secure encrypted messaging app, has been approved for use. The news was revealed in a letter by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a staunch privacy and encryption advocate, who recognized the effort to allow the encrypted messaging app as one of many "important defensive cybersecurity" measures introduced in the chamber.
A new fast-spreading computer attack and a hacking group’s threat to release a fresh trove of stolen cyberweapons are fueling fears among businesses and security experts of another global technology assault. The new attack, called Adylkuzz, follows last week’s WannaCry outbreak, which crippled computers in more than 100 countries over the weekend. Unlike its predecessor, Adylkuzz doesn’t lock up computer screens, but slows down systems as it quietly steals processing power to generate a little-known digital currency called Monero.
As evidence mounts that North Korean hackers may have links to the ransom assaults that destroyed more than 200,000 computers, their motives appear twofold: financial gain — which does not appear to be turning out so well — and proof that Pyongyang has the means to cause significant damage, with or without a nuclear weapon. Over the past year, the same North Korean hacking unit that hit Sony Pictures was linked to cyberattacks at banks in Vietnam and the Philippines, and to a breach at the Bangladesh Central Bank that resulted in the theft of $81 million.
Facebook Inc. agreed under Dutch pressure to stop targeting ads based on users’ sexual orientation as European regulators revealed a concerted clampdown on some of the social network’s data practices. The Dutch privacy authority said that Facebook has now put an end to methods that breached national law.
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