Microsoft Corp’s secret internal database for tracking bugs in its own software was broken into by a highly sophisticated hacking group more than four years ago, according to five former employees, in only the second known breach of such a corporate database. The company did not disclose the extent of the attack to the public or its customers after its discovery in 2013, but the five former employees described it to Reuters in separate interviews.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to resolve a major privacy dispute between the Justice Department and Microsoft Corp. over whether prosecutors should get access to emails stored on company servers overseas. The justices will hear the Trump administration’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling last year preventing federal prosecutors from obtaining emails stored in Microsoft computer servers in Dublin, Ireland in a drug trafficking investigation.
Technology companies are starting to respond to a new Wi-Fi exploit affecting all modern Wi-Fi networks using WPA or WPA 2 encryption. The security vulnerabilities allow attackers to read Wi-Fi traffic between devices and wireless access points, and in some cases even modify it to inject malware into websites.
Their track record is mixed, but North Korea’s army of more than 6,000 hackers is undeniably persistent, and undeniably improving, according to American and British security officials who have traced these attacks and others back to the North.Amid all the attention on Pyongyang’s progress in developing a nuclear weapon capable of striking the continental United States, the North Koreans have also quietly developed a cyberprogram that is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and proving capable of unleashing global havoc.
Iran carried out a “brute force” cyberattack on parliament that hit dozens of MPs this summer, according to a secret intelligence assessment. Some 9,000 email accounts, including those belonging to Theresa May and other cabinet ministers, were subjected to a sustained attack on June 23. Ninety accounts were compromised.
Qualcomm Inc. filed lawsuits in China seeking to ban the sale and manufacture of iPhones in the country, the chipmaker’s biggest shot at Apple Inc. so far in a sprawling and bitter legal fight. The San Diego-based company aims to inflict pain on Apple in the world’s largest market for smartphones and cut off production in a country where most iPhones are made.
Twitter has deleted tweets and other user data of potentially irreplaceable value to investigators probing Russia’s suspected manipulation of the social media platform during the 2016 election, according to current and former government cybersecurity officials. One reason is Twitter’s aggressively pro-consumer privacy policies, which generally dictate that once any user revises or deletes their tweets, paid promotions or entire accounts, the company itself must do so as well.
Twitter, facing pressure and an online boycott over its permissive attitude toward abusive and harassing speech, has decided to take a tougher stance, CEO Jack Dorsey said. In a series of tweets, Dorsey said the social media giant would announce new rules in the next few weeks restricting “unwanted sexual advances, nonconsensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups” and any post that “glorifies violence.”
The actress Rose McGowan said in an Instagram post overnight that her Twitter account had been temporarily locked after a series of posts about Harvey Weinstein’s misconduct, including toward her. In a statement, a Twitter representative said Ms. McGowan’s tweets had violated the company’s privacy policy because one of them included a phone number.
One Russian-linked campaign posing as part of the Black Lives Matter movement used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Pokémon Go and even contacted some reporters in an effort to exploit racial tensions and sow discord among Americans, CNN has learned. The campaign, titled "Don't Shoot Us," offers new insights into how Russian agents created a broad online ecosystem where divisive political messages were reinforced across multiple platforms, amplifying a campaign that appears to have been run from one source -- the shadowy, Kremlin-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.
Equifax Inc. pulled one of its customer help pages from its site so the company’s security team can investigate reports of another possible cyber attack. "We are aware of the situation identified on the equifax.com website in the credit report assistance link," Wyatt Jefferies, a spokesman for Equifax said in an email.
Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company was committed to helping U.S. congressional investigators publicly release Russia-backed political ads that ran during the 2016 U.S. election. “Things happened on our platform in this election that should not have happened,” Sandberg said in an interview in Washington with Axios news that was broadcast on its website.
Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said that they planned to make public the thousands of Facebook ads linked to Russia that appeared during the 2016 presidential election campaign, the first indication that the ads would be released. They said the 3,000 ads would probably be released after a Nov. 1 hearing on the role of social media platforms in Russia’s interference in the election.
A mystery hacker who was given the alias of an Australian soap opera character has stolen sensitive information about Australia's warplanes and navy ships from a Defence subcontractor. About 30 gigabytes of data was stolen, including information on Australia's $17 billion Joint Strike Fighter program, and $4 billion P-8 surveillance plane project.
Software produced by Microsoft Corp has been acquired by state organizations and firms in Russia and Crimea despite sanctions barring U.S-based companies from doing business with them, official documents show. The acquisitions, registered on the Russian state procurement database, show the limitations in the way foreign governments and firms enforce the U.S. sanctions, imposed on Russia over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
After Twitter blocked a campaign video ad from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, calling the ad “inflammatory” and claiming that it violated the company’s ad guidelines, the company has changed its mind. “While we initially determined that a small portion of the video used potentially inflammatory language, after reconsidering the ad in the context of the entire message, we believe that there is room to refine our policies around these issues. We have notified Rep. Blackburn's campaign of this decision," a Twitter spokesperson said.
Millions of Pornhub users were targeted with a malvertising attack that sought to trick them into installing malware on their PCs, according to infosec firm Proofpoint. By the time the attack was uncovered, it had been active “for more than a year”, Proofpoint said, having already “exposed millions of potential victims in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia” to malware by pretending to be software updates to popular browsers.
The Supreme Court asked the Trump administration for advice on a consumer lawsuit that accuses Apple Inc. of trying to monopolize the market for iPhone apps so it can charge excessive commissions. The company contends consumers can’t press the antitrust lawsuit because the 30 percent commission is levied on the app developers, not the purchasers.
Credit reporting agency Equifax Inc. said that 15.2 million client records in Britain were compromised in the massive cyber attack it disclosed last month, including sensitive information affecting nearly 700,000 consumers. The U.S.-based company said 14.5 million of the records breached, which dated from 2011 to 2016, did not contain information that put British consumers at risk.
North Korean hackers allegedly stole classified military documents from a South Korean Defense Ministry database in September 2016, according to Rhee Cheol-hee, a member of South Korea's National Assembly. Rhee, who belongs to the ruling Democratic Party and sits on the Defense Committee, told CNN that he received information about the alleged hacking from the Defense Ministry.
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