Month: December 2020

U.S. lawmakers briefed on the massive cybersecurity breach that has impacted government agencies and the private sector are calling for the country to act, warning that so far, all evidence is pointing to Russia as the culprit. The admonitions, from both Republicans and Democrats, follow warnings from U.S. cybersecurity officials that the scope of the hack is potentially much bigger than originally thought, encompassing multiple software platforms going back at least as far as March of this year. FILE - Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asks a question during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing in Washington, July 30, 2020."The full extent of the cyberhack [sic] is still unknown but we already know it is unprecedented in scale & scope," the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Marco Rubio, tweeted Friday. "The…

In recent weeks, Chinese regulators have cracked down on some of the country's biggest and most powerful technology companies, illustrating the immense market power of these companies, which has drawn concern from the government. On Monday, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), China's top market regulator, fined three of the country's largest technology companies, including e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and social-media juggernaut Tencent, for failing to disclose acquisitions of smaller competitors. Last month, China Securities Regulatory Commission halted the record initial public offering of Ant Group, one of China's dominant digital payment platforms backed by Alibaba. It then announced new draft rules targeting monopolistic practices on the country's digital platforms.  FILE - Signs of Alibaba Group and Ant Group are seen during the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China,…

Technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has facial recognition technology that can specifically pick out members of China's Uighur minority, surveillance industry researcher IPVM said in a report. Alibaba itself said it was dismayed a unit developed software that can tag ethnicity in videos, and that the feature was never intended to be deployed to customers. The report comes as human rights groups accuse China of forcing more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs into labor camps in the region of Xinjiang and call out firms suspected of complicity. FILE - Residents line up inside a vocational training center in Artux, in western China's Xinjiang region, Dec. 3, 2018. Critics say China uses some of these facilities as detention camps for forced labor.China has repeatedly denied forcing anyone into what it has called vocational…

The lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.'s Google continue to pile up. On December 17, 38 states filed a joint antitrust complaint that accuses the tech giant of expanding its search monopoly through smart speakers, televisions and cars, according to Reuters. It is the third major lawsuit against the company. The states are seeking to attach their suit with a federal suit announced by the Justice Department in October, according to the Colorado attorney general's office. The federal case alleges Google made deals with phone makers, including Apple and Samsung, to make Google the default search engine. It alleges it is also using its Android operating system to pressure device makers to preload Google search apps and other Google products. On December 16, another case was filed by another group of states led by Texas. That…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and President-elect Joe Biden both voiced new alarm Thursday about a wide intrusion into computer systems around the world that officials suspect was carried out by Russia.The cybersecurity unit of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the hack "poses a grave risk to the federal government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations."The assessment by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency was the most pointed yet since news of the intrusion first emerged last weekend. Both the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments were among the agencies whose secure data and emails were penetrated by the hack.US Says Recent Hacking Campaign Hit Government NetworksThe hackers are believed to be working for RussiaThe cybersecurity unit warned…

The U.S. government confirmed on Wednesday that a recent hacking campaign affected its networks and said the attack was "significant and ongoing."Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, Reuters reported earlier this week, citing people who said they feared the hacks uncovered so far may be the tip of the iceberg."This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government," said a joint statement issued by the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).Technology company SolarWinds Corp., which was the key stepping-stone used by the hackers,…