A go-to staple for professionals, LinkedIn can pose dangers to unsuspecting users because people have come to have confidence in it and by extension, implicit faith that all accounts on the platform are legitimate. Enter the hackers. Cybersecurity firms say criminals have figured out how to subvert the network by posing as authentic, boring, cubicle-office dwellers.
A U.S. House of Representatives committee said that it has scheduled a new hearing on Kaspersky Lab software as lawmakers review accusations that the Kremlin could use its products to conduct espionage. Kaspersky Lab has strongly denied those allegations, which last month prompted the Trump administration to order civilian government agencies to purge the software from its networks, and agreed to send Chief Executive Eugene Kaspersky to Washington to testify before Congress.
Disqus, which builds and provides a web-based comment plugin for news websites, said that hackers stole more than 17.5 million email addresses in a data breach in July 2012. The theft was only discovered now after the database was sent to Troy Hunt, who runs data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, who then informed Disqus of the breach.
Facebook is going to require ads that are targeted to people based on "politics, religion, ethnicity or social issues" to be manually reviewed before they go live, according to an email sent to advertisers and obtained by Axios. That's a higher standard than that required of most Facebook ads, which are bought and uploaded to the site through an automated system.
Congress is grappling with how to respond to the massive Equifax data breach after hackers gained access to the sensitive data of more than 145 million Americans. As lawmakers grilled former Equifax CEO Richard Smith over four separate hearings, they proposed a number of possible ways to prevent such massive breaches in the future.
To understand Russia’s meddling in the U.S. election, the frame should not be the reach of the 3,000 ads that Facebook handed over to Congress and that were bought by a single Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency, said social media analyst Jonathan Albright. Instead, the frame should be the reach of all the activity of the Russian-controlled accounts — each post, each “like,” each comment and also all of the ads. Looked at this way, the picture shifts dramatically.
Hackers working for the Russian government stole details of how the U.S. penetrates foreign computer networks and defends against cyberattacks after a National Security Agency contractor removed the highly classified material and put it on his home computer, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.The hackers appear to have targeted the contractor after identifying the files through the contractor’s use of a popular antivirus software made by Russia-based Kaspersky Lab, these people said.
Sonic Corp. said that credit and debit card numbers might have been compromised in a malware attack at some of its locations. The Oklahoma City-based drive-in chain also said it is offering two years of free fraud and identity theft protection for customers who used their cards at its locations.
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers unveiled legislation that would overhaul aspects of the National Security Agency’s warrantless internet surveillance program in an effort to install additional privacy protections. The bill is likely to revive debate in Washington over the balance between security and privacy, amid concerns among some lawmakers in both parties that the U.S. government may be too eager to spy on its own citizens.
Facebook Inc. is pledging greater transparency about who’s behind election-related ads online. For years, the company fought to avoid it. Since 2011, Facebook has asked the Federal Election Commission for blanket exemptions from political advertising disclosure rules -- transparency that could have helped it avoid the current crisis over Russian ad spending ahead of the 2016 U.S. election.
Children's health and privacy advocates are petitioning toy giant Mattel not to release a kid-focused smart hub called Aristotle, which they argue gives an unprecedented look into the personal lives of children. The issue has drawn attention from Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who sent Mattel a letter last week asking the toymaker for more information on how it will store and retain data it collects on children.
European competition regulators mounted a push against tax avoidance by Silicon Valley giants, announcing plans to take Ireland to court for failing to collect back taxes from Apple and ordering Luxembourg to claim unpaid taxes from Amazon. The effort, which comes as the European Union considers proposals meant to increase the sums levied on technology companies, is part of a concerted campaign to revamp how taxes are collected in the 28-nation bloc.
Allowing foreign governments to require reviews of software secrets of technology products built by U.S. companies is “problematic,” the top White House cyber security official said, adding that the increasingly common arrangements presented both security and intellectual property risks. Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator, said that letting countries inspect source code, the closely guarded internal instructions of software, as a condition for entry into foreign markets was a protectionist effort by certain regimes that threatened a “free and open internet” and could “hobble” a product’s security and privacy features.
All 3 billion of Yahoo’s users as of 2013 were affected by a data theft the company originally said had only affected 1 billion users, Yahoo said in a statement. That makes the Yahoo hack far and away the largest in history.
Ireland’s High Court said it would ask the EU’s top court to decide whether to ban the way in which Internet firms such as Facebook transfer users’ data to the United States in a case with major implications for companies. The case is the latest to question whether methods used by large tech firms such as Google and Apple to transfer data outside the 28-nation European Union give EU consumers sufficient protection from U.S. surveillance.
Brussels will hit Amazon with a bill for Luxembourg back taxes worth several hundred million euros in the latest fallout from the EU crackdown on tax avoidance by big multinationals. The European Commission’s move, confirmed by several people familiar with the case, comes on the heels of Apple’s record €13bn bill for Irish back taxes last year, which prompted a fierce political backlash from Washington.
Russian state-owned company TransTeleCom has provided a new Internet connection to Kim Jong Un's regime, according to North Korea monitoring project 38 North. The move strengthens North Korea's cybersecurity capabilities at a time of heightened tensions with the U.S. -- and also reduces its reliance on China.
Under intensifying pressure from Congress and growing public outcry, Facebook turned over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked advertisements from its site over to the Senate and House intelligence committees, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee. The material is part of an attempt to learn the depth of what investigators now believe was a sprawling foreign effort spanning years to interfere with the 2016 United States presidential election.
Equifax Inc. was alerted in March to the software security vulnerability that led to hackers obtaining personal information of more than 140 million Americans but took months to patch it, its former CEO said in testimony to be delivered to Congress. “It appears that the breach occurred because of both human error and technology failures,” former CEO Richard Smith said in written testimony released by the Energy and Commerce Committee.
An Indiana couple has pled guilty to charges of federal mail fraud and money laundering resulting from an elaborate plot that fleeced Amazon out of over $1.2 million in merchandise, according to The Star Press. Erin Finan, 38, and Leah Finan, 37, enacted their scheme by taking advantage of Amazon’s accommodating returns policy, which does not always require a broken item be sent back before a replacement is issued.
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.