Australia Formalizes Partnership with Federal Police to Target Cyber Criminals

Australia on formalized a new cyber-policing model in a stepped-up effort to "hunt down" cyber criminal syndicates, following recent hacks impacting millions of Australians. Minister for Home Affairs Clare O'Neil said the government had formalized a permanent partnership between the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Signals Directorate — which intercepts electronic communications from foreign countries — to do "new tough policing" on cybercrime.

Cryptocurrency Exchange Says It's Investigating Hacking After Bankruptcy Filing

A day after it filed for bankruptcy, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX said that it was investigating “unauthorized transactions” flowing from its accounts, as crypto researchers documented suspicious transfers of $515 million that may have been the result of a hack or theft. John J. Ray III, the newly instated chief executive of FTX, said in a statement that “unauthorized access to certain assets has occurred,” and that the company was in touch with law-enforcement officials and regulators.

FBI Considered Deploying Pegasus Hacking Tools, Documents Reveal

FBI officials made a push in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to deploy the Pegasus hacking tools — made by the Israeli spyware firm NSO — in its own criminal investigations. The officials developed advanced plans to brief the bureau’s leadership, and drew up guidelines for federal prosecutors about how the FBI’s use of hacking tools would need to be disclosed during criminal proceedings.

Australia May Consider Banning Ransomware Payments After Attacks

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said the government would consider making illegal the paying of ransoms to cyber hackers, following recent cyber attacks affecting millions of Australians. Australia's biggest health insurer, Medibank Private Ltd., last month suffered a massive cyber attack, as Australia grapples with a rise in hacks.

Hate Speech Surged on Twitter in Week After Musk's Takeover, Report Says

Hate speech surged during the first week of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, according to a new report released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Social media analytics tool Brandwatch documented that during the week of Oct. 31, the social media platform saw significantly higher numbers of slurs referring to people in the Black, Jewish and LGBT communities, among others.

EU Antitrust Regulators Launch Probe of Microsoft's Deal for Activision Blizzard

EU antitrust regulators opened a full-scale investigation into Microsoft’s $69 billion bid for “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard, warning the deal may hurt competition. The U.S. software company, which announced the deal in January, is betting Activision’s stable of games will help it compete better with leaders Tencent and Sony, with the latter being a critic of the deal.

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Maker of Oreo Cookies Stops Advertising on Twitter, Citing Hate Speech

Mondelez International Inc. CEO Dirk Van de Put said in a Reuters Newsmaker interview that the maker of Oreo cookies has pulled its ads off Twitter after Tesla Inc. boss Elon Musk acquired the social media site. "What we’ve seen recently since the change on Twitter has been announced, is the amount of hate speech increase significantly," Van de Put said.

European Tech Trade Group Files Antitrust Complaint Against Microsoft

Microsoft Corp. faces an antitrust complaint from a European industry group over its cloud services, adding to recent allegations of anticompetitive behavior against the U.S. tech company. Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe, or Cispe, a trade group which includes Amazon.com Inc. among its members, said it filed the complaint with the bloc’s competition regulator, the European Commission.

Greece to Ban Sale of Spyware After Allegations of Government Spying

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that Greece would ban the sale of spyware, after his government was accused in a news report of targeting dozens of prominent politicians, journalists and businessmen for surveillance, and the judicial authorities began an investigation. The announcement is the latest chapter in a scandal that erupted over the summer, when Mr. Mitsotakis conceded that Greece’s state intelligence service had been monitoring an opposition party leader with a traditional wiretap last year.

Australia's Biggest Health Insurer Says Hacker Stole, Disclosed Personal Data

Medibank Private Ltd, Australia's biggest health insurer, said some customer personal data believed to have been stolen from its systems has been released by the hacker on a dark web forum. The leaked data includes names, addresses and phone numbers of its customers, and in the case of some international students, passport numbers. Some health claims data was also released.

YouTube Removes Archive of WWDC Videos After Apple Files Complaint

After Apple issued several copyright claims, YouTube took down an archival channel containing hundreds of decades-old videos from past Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences (WWDC). Brendan Shanks, the owner of the Apple WWDC Videos channel, says his account’s been permanently disabled after receiving well over three copyright strikes — the maximum number of violations you can incur before YouTube removes your account.

Justice Department Seizes 50,000 Bitcoin After Theft Obtained on Silk Road

The Department of Justice announced it’s seized around 50,676 Bitcoin that a 32-year-old from Georgia fraudulently obtained from The Silk Road — a site on the dark web once called “the Amazon of drugs” — in 2012. After seemingly tipping authorities off to his large cache of Bitcoin a few years ago, James Zhong pleaded guilty to the crime after authorities found the Bitcoin stored in an underground safe and on a “single-board computer” hidden in a popcorn tin in a bathroom closet, according to a press release from the DOJ.

U.S. Treasury Stopped Cyber Attacks by Pro-Russian Hacker Group

The U.S. Treasury last month repelled cyber attacks by a pro-Russian hacker group, preventing disruption and confirming the effectiveness of the department's stronger approach to financial system cybersecurity, a U.S. Treasury official said. The Treasury has attributed the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to Killnet, the Russian hacker group that claimed responsibility for disrupting the websites of several U.S. states and airports in October, said Todd Conklin, cybersecurity counselor to Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.

FCC Commissioner Wants Council on Foreign Investment to Ban TikTok

The Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) should take action to ban TikTok, Brendan Carr, one of five commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, told Axios in an interview. With more than 200 million downloads in the U.S. alone, the popular app is becoming a form of critical information infrastructure — making the app's ownership by a Chinese parent company a target of growing national security concern.

Bipartisan Bill Would Make Online Assistance of Suicide a Federal Crime

Lawmakers are seeking to make online assistance of suicide a federal crime, pushing to hold accountable both individual users and the tech companies and websites that allow such content on their platforms. A bipartisan bill introduced in the House of Representatives, the Stop Online Suicide Assistance Forums Act, comes amid rising concern over suicide rates among young people, and mounting evidence of online dangers.

Musk's Twitter Takeover Allows Large Foreign Investors to Access Finances

Large foreign investors would have access to confidential information about Twitter’s finances — and potentially its users — under the terms of Elon Musk’s deal to acquire the social media site, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. That revelation comes as Treasury Department officials begin looking into whether they have the legal authority to start an investigation into the purchase because of Musk’s ties to foreign governments and investors, people familiar with those discussions said.

After Blocking Adult Content in 2018, Tumblr Begins Allowing Nudity

Tumblr changed enormously in 2018 after it started blocking all adult content, reportedly because images of child sexual abuse were posted on the website. It deleted tons of sex blogs and communities to comply with its new rule, and its already dwindling community never quite recovered since. Now, the website has updated its community guidelines so that the naked human form is once again allowed.

FTC Accuses Education Tech Firm Chegg of Disclosing Details on Millions of Users

The Federal Trade Commission cracked down on Chegg, an education technology firm based in Santa Clara, Calif., saying the company’s “careless” approach to cybersecurity had exposed the personal details of tens of millions of users. In a legal complaint, regulators accused Chegg of numerous data security lapses dating to 2017.

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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.