New York state’s highest court ruled that Facebook users may be required to turn over photos and other information that are relevant to litigation, even if they are shielded by “privacy” settings. By a 7-0 vote, the Court of Appeals reinstated a trial judge’s ruling requiring a Manhattan woman who was disabled in a horse riding accident to turn over to the defendant horse owner an array of photos taken before and after her injuries.
A cyberattack caused the Internet disruptions during the Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony, Olympic officials and security experts said. The cyberattack took out Internet access and telecasts, grounded broadcasters’ drones, shut down the Pyeongchang 2018 website, and prevented spectators from printing out reservations and attending the ceremony, which resulted in an unusually high number of empty seats.
Newtek Business Services Corp., a Web services conglomerate that operates more than 100,000 business Web sites and some 40,000 managed technology accounts, had several of its core domain names stolen over the weekend. The theft shut off email and stranded Web sites for many of Newtek’s customers. Three of their core domains were hijacked by a Vietnamese hacker, who replaced the login page many Newtek customers used to remotely manage their Web sites with a live Web chat service.
A German consumer rights group said that a court had found Facebook’s use of personal data to be illegal because the U.S. social media platform did not adequately secure the informed consent of its users. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations said that Facebook’s default settings and some of its terms of service were in breach of consumer law, and that the court had found parts of the consent to data usage to be invalid.
Official websites across many countries, including the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, were unwittingly drawn into a cryptocurrency-mining scheme that quietly hijacked the computers of people who visited those sites. The affected websites included those for the United States Courts, the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) and Information Commissioner’s Office (the British privacy regulator), and the Australian state governments for Victoria and Queensland.
International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde says it's only a matter of time before cryptocurrencies come under government regulation. "It's inevitable," she said. "It's clearly a domain where we need international regulation and proper supervision."
Pyeongchang Winter Olympics organizers confirmed that the Games had fallen victim to a cyber attack during the opening ceremony, but they refused to reveal the source. The Games’ systems, including the internet and television services, were affected by the hack two days ago but organizers said it had not compromised any critical part of their operations.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service, fresh off its success in uncovering U.S. assets hidden in Swiss banks, has assigned elite criminal agents to investigate whether Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are being used to cheat the taxman. A new team of 10 investigators is focusing on international crimes. In addition to following undeclared assets that are flowing out of Swiss banks after a crackdown, it will also build cases against tax evaders who use cryptocurrency.
An Italian cryptocurrency exchange called BitGrail said that it lost about 17 million tokens of a cryptocurrency called Nano, with a market value of about $170 million. In a note on its website, the exchange said “internal checks revealed unauthorized transactions which led to a 17 million Nano shortfall, an amount forming part of the wallet managed by BitGrail.”
The Department of Homeland Security is warning Americans planning to attend the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang that cybercriminals are likely to be targeting the Games. At the Olympic Committee’s Security Command Center in an unmarked facility in Pyeongchang, security experts from around the world are monitoring threats from North Korean hackers who have been probing the computer networks that manage South Korean finance, media and critical infrastructure systems for years.
Twitter left hundreds of Russian propaganda videos, with millions of views, on its video platform Vine for months after it should have known they were posted by a Kremlin-linked troll group. The discovery raises new questions about the nature of the company's effort to find and remove content produced by Russians trying to meddle in American politics, and how comprehensive it has been.
Apple has responded to security concerns surrounding leaked iPhone source code, pointing out that any potential vulnerabilities would be outdated. "Old source code from three years ago appears to have been leaked," Apple said in a statement, "but by design the security of our products doesn't depend on the secrecy of our source code."
Russian trolls pushed pro-Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and anti-Hillary Clinton content on Tumblr around the time of the election. Kremlin-linked accounts used the blogging platform to pose as black activists to promote their messages, according to researcher Jonathan Albright and BuzzFeed News.
Consumer Reports has found that millions of smart TVs can be controlled by hackers exploiting easy-to-find security flaws. We found that a relatively unsophisticated hacker could change channels, play offensive content, or crank up the volume, which might be deeply unsettling to someone who didn’t understand what was happening.
The U.S. charged 36 people in a take-down of an international cybercrime ring that prosecutors say used the slogan “In Fraud We Trust” and stole $530 million with the help of pilfered identities and malware.The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the racketeering conspiracy along with the arrest of 13 people, eight of whom the government will seek to extradite from Australia, the U.K., France, Italy, Kosovo and Serbia.
Two of the nation's top financial regulators said that Congress may need to grant them new powers if they are to protect consumers from fraud on cryptocurrency exchanges, the digital trading platforms where investors swap dollars for bitcoin or other virtual currencies. Asked by federal lawmakers whether they had enough authority to shield cryptocurrency investors from scams, market manipulation and abuse, top officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said that the agencies were still consulting with other U.S. officials but that they may need more legislative authority.
Apple Inc.’s takeover of music-identification service Shazam may threaten competition and should be reviewed by the European Commission, the regulator said.Apple will be told to file to the Brussels-based antitrust authority. It was originally required to file only with Austria’s regulator, and didn’t have to involve the EU, which usually takes large deals that affect Europe.
Apple Inc. has seen “strong demand” for replacement iPhone batteries and may offer rebates for consumers who paid full price for new batteries, the company said in a Feb. 2 letter to U.S. lawmakers. In the letter, amid nagging allegations that it slowed down phones with older batteries as a way to push people into buying new phones, the company said it was considering issuing rebates to consumers who paid full price for replacement batteries.
Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order requiring that New Jersey establish its own net neutrality protections after the Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era regulations late last year. The order directs all internet service providers that do business with the state of New Jersey to follow the principles of net neutrality or lose the ability to do business with the state.
The Senate voted unanimously to confirm President Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Andrei Iancu. Iancu’s vote was met with no pushback from Democrats, even though some voiced opposition over another Trump tech nominee, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, last October.
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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.