U.S. to Support UN Cybercrime Convention Despite Concerns of Misuse

The United States will support the United Nations cybercrime convention when it comes up for a vote this week, top officials said. The decision follows months of internal deliberations at the White House and other agencies over whether to support the treaty, which digital rights groups and other officials have raised serious concerns over due to its potential misuse by countries like Russia and China.

Businesses May Get Incentives to Bolster Cyber Defenses Under Trump

Businesses in critical infrastructure sectors — which have been besieged by hacking — should expect perks in exchange for improving their cyber defenses under the Trump administration, said Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank focused on national security. Those incentives might include safe harbor or liability protections for cloud providers, for example.

Judge Dismisses Professor's Facebook Suit Over 'Unfollow Everyone' Tool

A federal judge dismissed a suit brought by a professor who wants to build a tool that allows Facebook users to unfollow everyone in their feed. Ethan Zuckerman, who teaches public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, had asked a federal court to rule that Meta, Facebook’s owner, couldn’t sue him if he went through with his plan.

Trump Expected to Soften Regulation for Big Tech Companies

Donald Trump will likely dial back some of the antitrust policies pursued under the administration of President Joe Biden, potentially including a bid to break up Alphabet's Google over its dominance in online search, experts said. Trump is expected to continue cases against Big Tech, several of which began in his first term, but his recent skepticism about a potential Google breakup highlights the power he will hold over how those cases are run.

Read the article: Reuters

Canada Orders TikTok to Shut Business Operations, Citing National Security

Canada said it ordered TikTok Technology Canada, or the domestic unit of the social-media app’s China-based owner, to dissolve its business operations due to national-security concerns. The decision follows a review and is on the advice of the country’s security and intelligence agencies, said Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

Indonesia Blocks iPhone, Google Pixel Over Local Manufacturing Requirement

Indonesia said it has banned sales of smartphones made by Alphabet's Google due to rules requiring the use of locally manufactured components, days after blocking sales of tech giant Apple's iPhone 16 for the same reason.Indonesia blocked sales of Google Pixel phones because the company has not met the rules which necessitate certain smartphones sold domestically to contain at least 40% of parts manufactured locally.

UK Court Rejects Meta's Bid to Challenge Class-Action Suit Over Personal Data

Meta Platforms Inc. failed in a bid to challenge a class action suit in the UK that alleged Facebook abused its dominant position and exploited its users’ personal data. The UK’s Court of Appeal refused to permit Meta and Facebook’s UK unit to challenge a competition appeals court which had greenlit a revised version of the lawsuit.

Georgia Secretary of State Asks Musk to Delete Fake Voting Video from X

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said that his office asked Elon Musk, the owner of X, and the leadership of other social platforms to take down a video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs who claimed to have voted multiple times. The secretary’s office said that the video is false and it is working to identify where the video originated.

Russian Hackers Target U.S. Officials via Spearphishing, Microsoft Says

Russian hackers are going after U.S. government officials, defense workers and others in a new email phishing campaign targeting thousands of people, according to Microsoft Corp. The hackers have sent “a series of highly targeted spearphishing emails” to thousands of people in more than 100 organizations since Oct. 22, according to a blog post from Microsoft Threat Intelligence.

Chinese Government-Linked Hackers Target Trump's Son, Son-in-Law

U.S. officials believe Chinese government-linked hackers targeted Eric Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s call and text data as the scale of a sweeping cyber-espionage campaign targeting senior figures in both the Republican and Democratic parties comes into focus just days before the U.S. election, with dozens of people believed to be impacted, three people familiar with the matter told CNN. Former President Donald Trump’s son and son-in-law join a growing list of top political figures whose phone communications US officials believe were targeted by the elite Chinese hacking team.

  • Read the article: CNN

Delta Air Lines Sues CrowdStrike for 'Catastrophic' Software Update

Delta Air Lines sued cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in a Georgia state court after a global outage in July caused mass flight cancellations, disrupted travel plans of 1.3 million customers and cost the carrier more than $500 million. Delta's lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court called the faulty software update from CrowdStrike "catastrophic" and said the firm "forced untested and faulty updates to its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world to crash."

Hacking of National Security Database Hits Italian Politicians

Italy was reeling from a weekend of revelations on hacking of a national security database, bringing to light attempts to dig up sensitive information on high-profile individuals in the business and political arenas. A senior member of the Senate and a former prime minister were among the politicians targeted by hackers hired to dig up sensitive information, daily Corriere della Sera reported.

Apple Wins Watch Design Patent Verdict Against Masimo, Gets $250

A federal jury in Delaware awarded Apple Inc. $250, finding the original designs of Masimo Corp.'s smartwatches infringed Apple Watch design patents. The jury’s mixed verdict marks the latest chapter of a long-running clash over smartwatch patents pitting Apple, a tech giant worth more than $3.5 trillion, against Masimo valued at $7.5 billion.

Chinese Hackers Targeted Data on Phones Used by Trump, Vance

Chinese hackers targeted data from phones used by former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, as part of what appears to be a wide-ranging intelligence-collection effort, people familiar with the matter said. Investigators are working to determine what communications data, if any, was taken or observed by the sophisticated penetration of telecom systems, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an active and highly sensitive national security case.

Hackers Linked to Iranian Government Reportedly Probe U.S. Election Websites

Iranian government-linked hackers have researched and probed election-related websites in multiple U.S. swing states, in a possible effort to discover vulnerabilities that could be used to influence the presidential election, Microsoft said in a report. Officials from multiple federal agencies are looking closely at the Iranian activity, a U.S. official told CNN.

  • Read the article: CNN

Film Company Behind 'Blade Runner' Sues Tesla Over Image

A film production company that helped make “Blade Runner 2049” has sued Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk for using an AI-generated image resembling a scene from the science fiction movie to market Tesla’s new robotaxis. Alcon Entertainment said it refused all permissions but Tesla allegedly used artificial intelligence to “do it all anyway” when the carmaker unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi on Oct. 10 during a live-streamed event at a Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, California.

More Tensions Expected in U.S.-China Tech War Whoever Wins Election

The U.S.-China tech war is all but certain to heat up no matter whether Republican Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris wins the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, with the Democrat likely to come out with targeted new rules and Trump a blunter approach. New efforts to slow the flow of less-sophisticated Chinese chips, smart cars and other imports into the U.S. are expected, alongside more curbs on chipmaking tools and highly-prized AI chips headed to China, according to former officials from the Biden and Trump administrations, industry experts and people close to the campaigns.

Meta Oversight Board Voices 'Serious Concerns' About Election Moderation

Two weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the Oversight Board says it has “serious concerns” about Meta’s content moderation systems in “electoral contexts,” and that the company risks the “excessive removal of political speech” when it over-enforces its rules. The admonishment came as the board weighed in on a case involving a satirical image of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

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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.