Parts of an operation linked to Russian military intelligence targeting the U.S. Senate and conservative think tanks were thwarted last week, Microsoft announced. The company said it executed a court order giving it control of six websites created by a group known as Fancy Bear, which was behind the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee and directed by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit, according to cybersecurity firms.
Additional tariffs being considered on imports from China could cause consumers to pay between $1.6 billion and $3.2 billion more in 2019 for electronic products such as smart speakers, smartwatches and other Bluetooth-enabled devices, according to a new study published Friday by the Consumer Technology Association. Last month, President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods, and another $16 billion worth are set to take effect next week.
Anyone who owns an iPhone or Android phone and has turned off location tracking will be eligible to join a lawsuit that claims Google has created “near perfect surveillance” -- if a judge grants class-action status. The Mountain View search and digital advertising giant is in hot water over revelations that it continues to track users who turn off the location-history function on their mobile phones.
Apple Inc. pulled thousands of gambling apps from its Chinese store after the nation’s state-run broadcaster accused the smartphone maker of dragging its feet on cleaning up banned content. Government-controlled media including China Central Television attacked Apple this month for hosting illegal and fake lottery-ticket apps, which they said resulted in massive losses for hoodwinked users.
Animoto, a cloud-based video maker service for social media sites, has revealed a data breach. The breach occurred on July 10 but was confirmed by the company in early August, and later reported to the California attorney general.
U.S. President Donald Trump said that it is “very dangerous” for social media companies like Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. to regulate the content on their own platforms. Trump’s comments in an interview with Reuters come as the social media industry faces mounting scrutiny from Congress to police foreign propaganda.
Google has revised an erroneous description on its website of how its “Location History” setting works, clarifying that it continues to track users even if they’ve disabled the setting. The change came three days after an Associated Press investigation revealed that several Google apps and websites store user location even if users have turned off Location History. Google has not changed its location-tracking practice in that regard.
The sales director for Backpage.com pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, saying that he was involved in a scheme to give free advertising to sex workers to try and keep them away from competing platforms. The Associated Press reported that Dan Hyer, 49, faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 as part of his plea deal.
Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai defended to employees the Internet giant’s controversial push to do more business in China but said the company is “not close to launching a search product” in the country, according to a person briefed on the comments. Mr. Pichai, speaking at a weekly all-hands meeting in Mountain View, Calif., was responding to criticism from employees, human rights groups and others who in recent days have voiced concerns over the Alphabet Inc. unit’s work with the Chinese government.
Defendants in U.S. federal court cases now have another option for staying out on bail: emptying their virtual wallets. A district court in San Francisco has ordered alleged hacker Martin Marsich to pay the equivalent of $750,000 in cryptocurrency if he wants to live in a halfway house while facing trial.
President Donald Trump waded into the growing debate over the role of social media companies in policing public discourse, accusing them of “totally discriminating” against Republicans and conservative commentators. In a series of morning tweets from his private resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, the president suggested the companies, which he did not name specifically, were engaging in censorship.
The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc. to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance. The previously unreported case in a federal court in California is proceeding under seal, so no filings are publicly available, but the three people told Reuters that Facebook is contesting the U.S. Department of Justice’s demand.
President Trump has reversed an Obama-era memorandum dictating how and when the U.S. government can deploy cyberweapons against its adversaries, in an effort to loosen restrictions on such operations, according to people familiar with the action. Mr. Trump signed an order on Wednesday reversing the classified rules, known as Presidential Policy Directive 20, that had mapped out an elaborate interagency process that must be followed before U.S. use of cyberattacks, particularly those geared at foreign adversaries.
A Melbourne private schoolboy who repeatedly broke into Apple’s secure computer systems is facing criminal charges after the technology giant called in the FBI. The teen, who cannot be named for legal reasons, broke into Apple’s mainframe from his suburban home on multiple occasions over a year because he was such a fan of the company, according to his lawyer.
WordPress has taken down a handful alt-right blogs, according to several complaints from affected blog owners and readers who claim the sites were removed from WordPress.com, despite not being in violation of the company’s Terms of Service. The removals are in part due to a new policy WordPress has rolled out that now prohibits blogs from the “malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying images of minors.”
A majority of U.S. states has adopted technology that allows the federal government to see inside state computer systems managing voter data or voting devices in order to root out hackers. Two years after Russian hackers breached voter registration databases in Illinois and Arizona, most states have begun using the government-approved equipment, according to three sources with knowledge of the deployment.
Hackers operating from an elite Chinese university probed American companies and government departments for espionage opportunities following a U.S. trade delegation visit to China earlier this year, security researchers told Reuters. Cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said the group used computers at China’s Tsinghua University to target U.S. energy and communications companies, as well as the Alaskan state government, in the weeks before and after Alaska’s trade mission to China.
FBI agents in California and Washington, D.C., have investigated a series of cyberattacks over the past year that targeted a Democratic opponent of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Rohrabacher is a 15-term incumbent who is widely seen as the most pro-Russia and pro-Putin member of Congress and is a staunch supporter of President Trump.
Japanese regulators are investigating Apple Inc. over allegations it unfairly pressured Yahoo Japan Corp to slow the expansion of its online games platform, which competes with Apple’s App Store, Japanese media reported. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is looking at whether Apple interfered in Yahoo Japan’s operations by pressuring it to cut back on developing its Game Plus web-based service which enables users to stream games without downloading apps, the Nikkei newspaper reported.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said he is rethinking core parts of the social media platform so it doesn’t enable the spread of hate speech, harassment and false news, including conspiracy theories shared by prominent users like Alex Jones and Infowars. In an interview with The Washington Post, Dorsey said he was experimenting with features that would promote alternative viewpoints in Twitter’s timeline to address misinformation and reduce “echo chambers.”
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