Florida City Pays $600,000 in Bitcoin to Hacker Who Locked Computers

A Florida city is paying $600,000 in Bitcoins to a hacker who took over local government computers after an employee clicked on a malicious email link three weeks ago. Riviera Beach officials voted this week to pay 65 Bitcoins to the hacker who seized the city's computer systems, forcing the local police and fire departments to write down the hundreds of daily 911 calls on paper, CNN affiliate WPEC reported.

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U.N. Expert Recommends Moratorium on Sale, Use of Surveillance Software

The world should impose a moratorium on the sale and use of surveillance software until there are rules in place to stop governments using it to spy on opponents and critics, a U.N. expert recommended. David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression, submitted his recommendations in a report published to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which will open a three-week session next week.

Argentina Considers Cyberattack as Cause of Power Blackout in Five Countries

Argentina said it isn’t ruling out a cyberattack after what President Mauricio Macri called an “unprecedented” power blackout struck five South American countries. Macri said Argentina is investigating the incident, which began with an as yet unexplained fault in its power grid that led to outages in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay.

Decryption Tool Neutralizes Ransomware By Letting Victims Retrieve Files

A new decryption tool that counters one of the most prolific families of ransomware by allowing victims to retrieve their files for free has been released in a collaborative effort by Europol, the FBI, cybersecurity company Bitdefender, and others. The latest version of the GandCrab decryptor neutralizes the most recent incarnations of the file-locking malware — GandCrab 5.0 through to GandCrab 5.2 — as well as allowing users to retrieve files encrypted by older versions of the ransomware.

Lawyer Gets 14-Year Sentence for Porn Video-Sharing Fraud Scheme

A federal judge in Minneapolis has sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison for an elaborate fraud scheme that involved uploading pornographic videos to file-sharing networks and then threatening to sue people who downloaded them. Prenda Law came up with a novel way of ginning up more business: uploading the films itself, including some that were produced by Prenda associates.

U.S. Increases Cyberoperations Against Russia's Electric Power Grid

The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said. In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections.

European Authorities Blame Russian Groups for Disinformation Campaigns

European authorities blamed Russian groups for disinformation campaigns designed to depress turnout and sway public opinion in last month’s European Union elections, an official accounting that underscored how Russian interference has not abated and that Facebook and other tech platforms remain vulnerable to meddling. The preliminary review by the European Commission and the bloc’s foreign policy and security arm found that Russian-linked groups and other nonstate actors had worked to undermine credibility in the European Union through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Genius.com Accuses Google of Publishing Lyrics from Its Website

Genius Media Group Inc. depends on Google’s search engine to send music lovers to its website stocked with hard-to-decipher lyrics to hip-hop songs and other pop hits. Now Genius.com says its traffic is dropping because, for the past several years, Google has been publishing lyrics on its own platform, with some of them lifted directly from the music site.

Lawsuits Accuse Amazon of Using Alexa to Record Children Without Consent

Two lawsuits against Amazon claim that the company’s Alexa voice assistant illegally records kids without parental consent. The federal lawsuits, both of which seek class action status, allege that Alexa-enabled devices, such as the Echo and Echo Dot, violate laws in nine states — California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington — by storing recordings of children, according to court documents.

Telegram CEO Blames China for 'Powerful DDoS Attack' Amid Hong Kong Protests

The chief executive of Telegram, a popular encrypted messaging app, said the messaging service experienced a “state actor-sized” cyber attack and pointed to China as its likely country of origin. The service was hit by a “powerful DDoS attack” originating from IP addresses mostly inside China, Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, said in a tweet.

Huawei Tells Verizon to Pay Licensing Fees for More Than 200 Patents

Huawei Technologies Co. has told Verizon Communications Inc. that the carrier should pay licensing fees for more than 200 of its patents, according to people familiar with the matter, further escalating tensions between the Chinese company and the U.S. A Huawei intellectual property licensing executive wrote to the U.S. wireless carrier in February, telling Verizon it should pay to “solve the patent licensing issue,” according to the people. Verizon isn’t a Huawei customer.

Facebook Finds Emails Connecting Zuckerberg to Questionable Privacy Practices

Facebook Inc. uncovered emails that appear to connect Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to potentially problematic privacy practices at the company, according to people familiar with the matter. Within the company, the unearthing of the emails in the process of responding to a continuing federal privacy investigation has raised concerns that they would be harmful to Facebook — at least from a public-relations standpoint — if they were to become public, one of the people said.

Google Moves Some Nest Production Out of China to Avoid U.S. Tariffs

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is moving some production of Nest thermostats and server hardware out of China, avoiding punitive U.S. tariffs and an increasingly hostile government in Beijing, according to people familiar with the matter. Google has already shifted much of its production of U.S.-bound motherboards to Taiwan, averting a 25% tariff, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters.

WhatsApp Threatens Legal Action Against Those Who Abuse Its System

WhatsApp has threatened legal action against those who publicly claim the ability to abuse its messaging platform, after the emergence of a raft of companies advertising products to bypass usage restrictions. A Reuters investigation found in May that WhatsApp clones and software tools were helping Indian digital marketers and political activists bypass anti-spam restrictions in the run-up to India’s general election.

Warren Wants Antitrust Leader to Recuse Self from Probe of Google, Apple

Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called on the Justice Department’s antitrust division chief, Makan Delrahim, to recuse himself from the department’s antitrust investigations into Google and Apple, saying his past lobbying for the companies raised conflict of interest concerns. In a letter to Delrahim, Warren said Alphabet Inc’s Google had hired him in 2007 to lobby federal antitrust officials on behalf of the company’s proposed acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick Inc, and he had reported an estimated $100,000 in income from Google in that year.

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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.