News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Facebook Threatens News Blackout in California
over ‘Journalism Preservation Act’

Facebook (now known as Meta) has threatened to block all news articles in California from its main platform and Instagram if a proposed law known as the California Journalism Preservation Act is passed, sparking the latest standoff between tech giants and the news industry.
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This legislation aims to impose a tax on the advertising revenue that tech platforms generate from the distribution of news articles, with the majority of the money going toward supporting local newsrooms.

Essentially, the California Journalism Preservation Act would tax the advertising revenue that platforms generate from disseminating news content. The so-called “usage fee” would fund newsrooms across the state to the tune of about 70 percent of the money collected.

Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, a Democrat who represents Oakland and is sponsoring the bill, commented: “As news consumption has moved online, community news outlets have been downsized and closing at an alarming rate.”

Facebook claims that local news publishers would not benefit as much from the legislation as out-of-state websites would. “If the Journalism Preservation Act passes, we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram, rather than pay into a fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers,” said spokesman Andy Stone.

Amazon to Pay $30 Million Settlement for Violating Privacy of Children

Amazon has reached an agreement to pay more than $30 million to resolve claims of privacy violations involving its voice assistant Alexa and doorbell camera Ring.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged the tech giant with violating privacy laws by holding onto children’s data, including voice and geolocation information, despite parental requests for its deletion. According to reports, this information was used to improve Amazon’s algorithms, which is against the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

“Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profits,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “COPPA does not allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms.”

Amazon will pay a $25 million civil fine as part of the settlement and will not be allowed to use data that has been asked to be deleted. Additionally, the business will be required to delete children’s inactive Alexa accounts and notify its clients of the FTC’s actions.

In a separate lawsuit, Amazon was accused of allowing its Ring employees to watch customers’ camera recordings without their permission, resulting in a $5.8 million fine. The FTC claimed that Amazon failed to implement adequate security measures, which allowed for harassment and hacking incidents.
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Despite these accusations, Amazon insists that it has always taken precautions to protect customer privacy and has never broken any laws. According to the company, all child profiles must have parental consent, clear privacy disclosures are provided, and child recordings and transcripts can be removed from the Alexa app.

[kyonides]

Guys, I won't lie to you. Today we're loaded with some really weird or unexpected news.

Facebook Prevents RFK Jr. from Launching Instagram Campaign Account

Facebook-owned Instagram is preventing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is competing with President Joe Biden in the Democrat primary, from setting up an official campaign account, according to the candidate.

In a post on Twitter, RFK Jr. said that his campaign account is being automatically banned when they attempt to set up a campaign account.

“When we use our TeamKennedy email address to set up Instagram accounts we get an automatic 180-day ban,” said the Democrat candidate on Twitter. “Can anyone guess why that’s happening?”

“To silence a major political candidate is profoundly undemocratic. Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square. How can democracy function if only some candidates have access to it?”

RFK Jr’s personal Instagram account was banned from the platform in February 2021, at the height of the coronavirus panic, for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” per a Facebook (now known as Meta) statement at the time.

In another tweet, the Democrat candidate thanked Twitter owner Elon Musk for allowing him and his campaign to “have a voice.”

Google’s YouTube Drops Policy
that Censors Discussion of 2020 Election Fraud

YouTube, facing increased competition from platforms that are friendlier to free speech including Rumble and Twitter, has dropped a policy responsible for the widespread censoring of conservative voices. It is now possible to dispute the results of the 2020 election on YouTube.

Stressing the need to allow people to “openly debate political ideas,” YouTube said it will “stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.”

Google stressed that its election misinformation policies remain in place for future elections.

“All of our election misinformation policies remain in place, including those that disallow content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting; false claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail; and content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes.”

The tech company also boasted that it is tipping the scales in favor of the corporate legacy media, by ensuring that “see content from authoritative sources prominently in search and recommendations.”

...YouTube’s search blacklist file, which allowed the company to manually intervene in politically charged search results to boost the visibility of its handpicked channels.

The blacklist, called a “smoking gun” by one Google whistleblower, was at times adjusted in response to complaints from the corporate legacy media.
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Twitter, which has unbanned several prominent conservatives under Elon Musk, recently allowed users to begin uploading longform videos. Musk recently personally intervened to override the decision of the company’s “trust and safety” team to censor Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman documentary, a move that was followed by the resignation of the platform’s top censor.

BBC Accused of Censorship After Blocking
Andrew Tate Interview for UK Viewers

After previously trolling a former VICE reporter into flying to Bucharest on the false promise of an interview, kickboxing champion turned social media star Andrew Tate granted the BBC “the privilege” of his first interview after being released from Romanian prison into house arrest custody in April.

However, before the British public broadcaster aired the interview, Tate pre-empted what he suspected would be a legacy media hit job by releasing his own footage of the 40-minute sit-down with the BBC’s Lucy Williamson on his Rumble channel. The BBC quickly released their own version of the interview a few hours later, apparently hastily cobbled together given several sloppy edits, and cut down to just 9 minutes.

There has been backlash over the BBC’s edited version from some, and given the message that greets British users of the YouTube platform when they attempt to now watch the video — “the uploader has not made this video available in your country” — it appears the BBC have decided to shut the clip down. At the time of this reporting, the video, which is still available outside of the UK, has over 160,000 dislikes compared to just 19,000 upvotes on YouTube.
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Andrew Tate’s brother Tristan Tate accused the broadcaster of having a political agenda behind the decision to block the video regionally, saying: “It’s almost as though there is an agenda to paint my brother in a negative light. When the attack fails, make sure nobody in England sees it.”

No Escape: ALL TV Remotes Must Have
Dedicated BBC Button, Broadcaster Demands

In a submission to the British government, the state-funded BBC has demanded that all TV remote controls containing dedicated buttons for the likes of Netflix should be required by law to have a similar button for the BBC.

Seemingly not satisfied with having the power to force all television viewers to pay for their service, regardless of whether they use it or not, the BBC is now expressing frustration at the growth of private entertainment alternatives, with those at the head of the organisation now demanding the government step in to change that.

According to a report by The Times, the UK government has already acquiesced to this demand, with a coming media bill to force smart television makers to include a dedicated section for all public broadcasters — including the BBC — at the top of their main menu within the operating system.

This forced placement is not enough for some at the broadcaster, however, with the BBC demanding that a dedicated button be added to remote controls for televisions sold in the UK where similar buttons are available for other privately owned streaming services.
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“Without a legislative backstop, PSBs [public service broadcasters] are losing out to global platforms,” it continued. “There should be a requirement for a dedicated PSB button on remote controls in instances where there are similar buttons for non-PSB services.”

So far, this demand has been resisted by the British government, which has said that adjustments to remote controls is “not in scope” of the coming bill.

[kyonides]

Sonic the Hedgehog creator sentenced to 2.5 years in prison

The creator of one of gaming's most iconic characters has found himself behind bars. Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, was arrested in Japan last November after being accused of insider trading at Square Enix, where he was working since 2018.

Back in March 2023, Naka pled guilty and this week, he was sentenced to two years and six months in prison, along with a fine of 172 million yen (or $1,230,066).

Naka bought 2.8 million yen worth of shares in game development company Aiming before its involvement with Square Enix was made known to the public. However, at this time, Aiming was working on a new mobile game for the Dragon Quest franchise, considered to be one of Japan's most popular and successful RPG franchises.

Two former Square Enix employees also being investigated under the same suspicions were the ones who eventually led to Naka's arrest, with the three of them having used insider information for equity and illegally trading shares.

Meta Introduces Broadcast Tool Channels on WhatsApp

Meta Platforms on Thursday introduced WhatsApp Channels, a feature that the social media giant said would help make the app a “private broadcast messaging product.”

Users in Colombia and Singapore will be the first to receive access to Channels. Over the coming months, Meta will expand the availability of the tool for users in more countries, it said.

The company said users will be able to follow content on their hobbies, sports teams, updates from local officials, and others.

Profile photos and contact information of the channel admin would not be visible to followers. Similarly, followers will not have their phone numbers revealed.

Ella Irwin, Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, Resigns

Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, has resigned from the social media company nearly a year after she joined in June 2022.

Irwin confirmed her departure to Reuters but did not provide a reason for the move.

The former Amazon director joined Twitter last summer just a few months before Musk acquired the platform for $43 billion; taking over as head of the trust and safety team in November after previous head Yoel Roth resigned.

She oversaw content moderation, including hate speech on the platform, in her former role. It is unclear who will replace her.

Irwin had previously defended both Twitter and Musk, who has faced criticism amid concerns that the platform’s content moderation policies would be weakened under the billionaire businessman.

Tucker Carlson Starts New Twitter Show Weeks After Leaving Fox

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released the first episode of his new show on Twitter on June 6, delving into the mysterious destruction of a dam in Ukraine.

“As of today, we have come to Twitter, which we hope will be the short wave radio under the blankets,” Carlson stated toward the end of the video. “We’re told there are no gatekeepers here. If that turns out to be false, we’ll leave.
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He signed off the show, dubbed “Tucker on Twitter,” saying that he will be back on the platform with “much more, very soon.”
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“The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian,” Carlson said. “It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian-controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

“Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.
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Much of his Twitter broadcast was spent attacking news organizations for always assuming that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “evil.” Carlson instead criticized Zelenskyy, describing him as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch” who is a “persecutor of Christians” and “a friend of BlackRock.”
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The first episode of Carlson’s Twitter show lasted a little more than 10 minutes and had more than 10.5 million views after about two hours.

Reddit to Lay Off About 5 Percent of Its Workforce

Reddit said on Tuesday it is laying off about 5 percent of its workforce, or 90 employees, joining a list of technology companies that have been cutting jobs across corporate America.
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Reddit, which was spun off from magazine conglomerate Conde Nast in 2011, saw a recent surge in appeal due to the popularity of WallStreetBets and other forums on its platform that have become a venue for retail investors to speculate on stocks.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Reddit’s move on Tuesday, citing an email sent to employees from Chief Executive Steve Huffman.

Huffman said the company would also reduce its hiring for the rest of the year to about 100 people from an early plan of 300, according to the WSJ report.

[kyonides]

Hillary Clinton trolls Donald Trump after his indictment
by hawking 'BUT HER EMAILS' merchandise on Twitter

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared to gloat following the news that former President Donald Trump was indicted on seven federal charges related to mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida.

In September 2022, Clinton claimed investigators found "zero" classified emails on her private email server, despite a 2018 government report saying 193 emails that were classified when they were drafted were sent to or from her server.

Clinton was investigated by the FBI in 2015 for holding classified information on her private email server at home.

Then-FBI Director James Comey had said publicly that Clinton mishandled classified information, but he declined to recommend prosecution and the Justice Department declined to move forward.

On Friday morning, Clinton took to Twitter to promote merchandise branded with the tagline "BUT HER EMAILS."

"Bringing this back in light of recent news: Get a limited-edition But Her Emails hat and support @onwardtogether, groups working to strengthen our democracy," she wrote.

Zuckerberg says 'establishment' asked Facebook
to censor COVID misinfo that ended up true: 'Undermines trust'

Meta (Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed recently that the scientific "establishment" asked his platform to "censor" posts about COVID-19 that ended up being "debatable or true."

In his comments during Thursday's episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast," Zuckerberg discussed the "issues and challenges" of executing his platform's policies on removing "misinformation."

He said it can be "really tricky" when some content is false, "but may not be harmful, so it's like, alright, are you going to censor someone for just being wrong, if there’s no kind of harm implication of what they’re doing?’"

As an example, Zuckerberg said, "Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions, and, unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts."

Zuckerberg noted the "establishment" encouraged him to enforce these shaky facts, saying they "asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true."

US charges two Russians in hack of Mt. Gox crypto exchange

The United States has charged two Russian nationals in the hack of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, one of the world's earliest, biggest and most widely publicized alleged bitcoin heists.

The department in a statement said Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Aleksandr Verner, 29, were charged with conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoins from their hack of Mt. Gox, which collapsed in 2014 after losing what was then worth about half a billion dollars in cryptocurrency.
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Bilyuchenko was a key associate of Alexander Vinnik, a Russian cybercrime kingpin who was arrested in Greece in 2017, convicted of money laundering in France three years later and is now awaiting trial in California on charges of running BTC-e, a now-defunct Russian exchange the Department of Justice accused of catering to "cyber criminals around the world."

When Vinnik was arrested, Bilyuchenko - who was staying elsewhere in Greece - narrowly avoided arrest by destroying his computer, tossing it into the sea and immediately flying back to Moscow, the BBC previously reported.

The Department of Justice said Bilyuchenko is also charged with conspiring with Vinnik to operate BTC-e from 2011 to 2017.

ACT Government Hit by Cyber Security Breach

Federal authorities have been brought in to investigate a cyber security breach of ACT government IT systems.

The security breach was detected in an email gateway system called Barracuda, which supports some IT systems for the territory government.

ACT Special Minister of State Chris Steel said investigations were underway to determine what data may have been accessed during the breach.
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The Australian Cyber Security Centre has been brought by the ACT Cyber Security Centre to investigate the incident, along with Barracuda Networks.

Security concerns were first detected in late May by Barracuda after the company identified vulnerabilities in its email security gateway.

Mr Steel said following the notification, the ACT Cyber Security Centre detected that the breach had taken place, leading to a rebuild of the affected system.

ACT residents can continue using government services online safely.

 Seriously? Just like that?

Microsoft to Pay $20 Million Fine for Violating Children’s Privacy

Tech giant Microsoft has agreed to pay a multi-million dollar settlement to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for illegally collecting children’s personal information without parental consent.

The $20 million settlement came after the FTC charged Microsoft for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). According to COPPA rules, websites and online services open to children below the age of 13 must notify parents regarding the personal information collected. The service should also obtain verifiable consent from parents before collecting and using such information, according to a June 5 FTC press release.

The FTC charged Microsoft for collecting private info from children who signed up for its Xbox gaming system without following COPPA rules while also illegally retaining such data.
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“This action should also make it abundantly clear that kids’ avatars, biometric data, and health information are not exempt from COPPA.”

In addition to the $20 million monetary penalty, Microsoft is also required to take several steps to boost privacy protections for child users of its Xbox systems.

As part of this, Microsoft has to obtain parental consent for accounts created before May 2021 in case the account holder is still a child.

The company must also notify game publishers while disclosing personal information from children that the user is still a child so that the publishers can apply COPPA protections to such accounts.

NZ Government Agency Bans Staff From Using AI Platforms

The New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) issued the ban on tools like ChatGPT after concerns sensitive information inputted into such platforms could be later retrieved, reported RNZ.

AI-powered chatbots trawl through information online, which they will then process to “generate” a response based on whatever prompts it is given by a user. AI programs can now generate answers to questions, poetry, coding, and even musical composition.

However, due to data concerns, companies like Apple, Samsung, Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs have banned staff from using the tech.

The move by the New Zealand government agency comes after governments around the world move to establish controls over how to use AI.
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In New Zealand, the government’s chief digital officer at the Department of Internal Affairs was also working on guidance for agencies.

While in Canada, the country’s privacy watchdog has launched its own investigation into ChatGPT.

“AI technology and its effects on privacy is a priority for my office,” Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne said in a media release in April.

[kyonides]

Congressman urges DOJ to probe suspected Iran ‘kill list'
targeting US law enforcement and American Jews

Rep. Jack Bergman has raised national security alarm bells by calling on the Justice Department to investigate ongoing efforts of an anti-American website that is allegedly promoted by Iran’s regime and incites assassination attacks against U.S. law enforcement personnel and American Jews.

Bergman, R-Mich., sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month. The letter, exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, called for immediate action.

He wrote, "To protect Americans’ national security interests and religious freedoms, the Justice Department should commission a full investigation into the origins and funding of the Mapping Project, including possible collaboration with the Islamic Republic."
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"Launched in 2022, the Mapping Project maintains a website with an interactive map that pinpoints the precise geographic locations of more than 500 civil society, government, national security, religious, and community organizations in the state of Massachusetts that it claims should be ‘dismantled’ for advancing perceived 'harms' in the United States and in Israel."

He noted, "Among the entities whose precise locations are shared on the Mapping Project website are some 271 police stations – law enforcement is a frequent target for the Mapping Project, which publicly called for the abolition of the Boston Police Department – nine U.S. military bases and installations, and several Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service offices. Nearly 300 of the approximately 500 organizations mapped by the Mapping Project contribute to the nation’s national security."

[DerVVulfman]

TRAUMATIZED ARIZONA MOM
RECALLS SICK A.I. KIDNAPPING SCAM
IN GRIPPING TESTIMONY TO CONGRESS
Scammers used AI to clone her teen daughter's voice in a fake kidnapping plot.
Said they would pump her "so full of drugs" if the ransom wasn't paid.

An Arizona mom traumatized by sick scammers who used AI to clone her teen daughter’s voice in a fake kidnapping plot described in gripping testimony to Congress how the heartless con artists threatened to pump her child’s stomach “so full of drugs” if she didn’t pay their ransom.

Jennifer DeStefano, a mother of two from Scottsdale, sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and described the harrowing call that she believed was made by her 15-year-old daughter Brianna on Jan. 20.

The mom is calling for urgent action from lawmakers to address the threats of AI after she said authorities dismissed her complaint.

DeStefano told the members of the subcommittee on human rights and the law that she was picking up her younger daughter, Aubrey, from dance rehearsal when she got a call from an unknown number.

“At the final ring, I chose to answer it, as unknown calls can often be a hospital or a doctor,” she recalled.

“It was Briana sobbing and crying, saying, ‘Mom.’ At first, I thought nothing of it and casually asked her, ‘What happened?’ I had the phone on speaker walking into the parking lot to meet her sister,” she told the panel.
Brianna was supposed to be with her dad training for a ski race.

“‘Mom, I messed up!’” the person she thought was her daughter said through uncontrollable sobs, the traumatized mom recounted. “‘Mom, these bad men have me. Help me! Help me!’”

She described how realistic the clone was because “it wasn’t just her voice, it was her cries, it was her sobs.”

Suddenly, a chilling male voice came on the line and demanded a $1 million ransom.

“A threatening and vulgar man took the call over. ‘Listen here. I have your daughter. You call anybody, you call the police, I’m gonna pump her stomach so full of drugs. I’m gonna have my way with her. I’m gonna drop her in Mexico. You’ll never see your daughter again,'” an emotional DeStefano recalled, fighting back tears.

“It started at $1 million. It was reduced to $50,000 because that wasn’t possible. I asked him for wiring instructions,” she said, adding that he refused and demanded that she get inside a van with a bag over her head with the cash in hand.

Another mom soon told her that she had reached her husband, who found Brianna “resting safely in bed.”

“She came to me and told me that Brianna was safe but I did not believe her because I had just spoken to my daughter and I was very sure of her voice and I was very sure of her cries,” she said.

“I will never be able to shake that voice and the desperate cries for help out of my mind,” she added.

“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to hear their child pleading in fear and pain, knowing that they are being harmed and are helpless.”

DeStefano said she later found out that artificial intelligence scams are common.

“They can use not just the voice, but the inflection, the emotion. I still didn’t believe it, because I heard — I talked to my daughter. It was my daughter,” she said.

When the anguished mom reported the cruel deepfake scam to police, she said they called it a “prank call” and told her nothing could be done since no kidnapping had taken place and no money had been sent.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) said he held the meeting so the Senate “could investigate and understand the nature of the threats from the abuse of the use of artificial intelligence.”

He said lawmakers have “identified some important areas where there may be a need for new legislation, or to press federal law enforcement agencies to better protect families in Georgia and across the country from these threats.”

Several experts also addressed the Senate panel Tuesday, including Aleksander Madry, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the MIT Center for Deployable Machine Learning.

“The newest wave of generative AI is poised to fundamentally transform our collective sense-making,” Madry said, according to Courthouse News.

“I think no matter what happens, the public needs to understand how to interact with AI systems, and to be on the lookout for when they are actually interacting with AI in the first place. We do not want to learn this the hard way,” he said.

Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the DC-based Center for Democracy and Technology, said generative AI models could also be used to spread disinformation during elections.

“In past elections, operatives used robocalls and texts to spread deceptive information,” Givens said. “But now, bad actors can easily use AI to exponentially grow and personalize voter suppression or other targeting.”

DeStefano called for immediate action before the abuse of AI becomes even greater.

“My greatest fear is how is that going to manifest into other areas like human trafficking and abduction of children,” he said. “Because luckily, I was an adult who had other adults around me. But what if that was a child? ‘Hey, it’s Mom. Come meet me here.’ That’s my greatest fear.”

The mom warned that if this threat from AI is “left uncontrolled, unregulated and unprotected,” it will “rewrite our understanding and perception of what is — and what is not — truth.”

[kyonides]

'Red Alert': China posts bizarre video
of marching female Chinese soldiers
to sounds of classic video game

The Chinese government has posted a bizarre video of female Chinese soldiers marching in various settings to its official account for its embassy in France — and featuring music that was made for a famous 1996 military strategy video game.

The video, captioned "Les femmes de l'armée chinoise" ("The women of the Chinese army"), was posted on Sunday and features a number of clips of female soldiers marching in different contexts.

However, the music featured over the top of the clips is well-known to real-time strategy gaming buffs who grew up in the 1990s.

The music, peppered by the sound of boots and militaristic commands, is from the opening to the 1996 title "Command & Conquer: Red Alert." That game, which is widely regarded as one of the best titles in its genre, is premised in an alternate timeline where Albert Einstein discovers time travel in a lab in New Mexico. As a result, in 1946 he transports back to pre-war Germany and removes future dictator Adolf Hitler from history altogether.

Einstein reappears in 1946 and is congratulated by his assistant for preventing World War II. Einstein warns that the celebration is premature.
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But it comes amid growing aggression from the Chinese, both at home and abroad. The communist regime has been ramping up its deployments near Taiwan, which it sees as its own and a breakaway province.

Keep in mind that the undated video was posted to a Chinese Twitter account on Sunday.

[kyonides]

Amazon’s $1.7 Billion Deal to Buy
Roomba Maker iRobot Gets UK Approval

The Competition and Markets Authority said it decided not to escalate its initial investigation because it concluded that the deal would not result in a “substantial lessening of competition” within the United Kingdom.

Amazon said it was pleased with the result.
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Consumer groups have voiced concerns that Amazon’s purchase of Bedford, Massachusetts-based iRobot, which makes the popular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, would widen the e-commerce giant’s dominance in the smart home market.

The acquisition is still facing a review in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission amid worries about Amazon’s growing market power. It’s also under scrutiny by the European Union’s executive arm, which opened a review of the deal this month.

The UK watchdog said in its decision that robot vacuum cleaners and the data they collect aren’t generally considered an important gateway to the emerging market for smart home devices.

Meta’s Facebook, Instagram Down for Thousands of Users, Says Downdetector

Meta Platforms on Friday said it was aware of issues with its Ads Manager, its advertising tool that lets brands buy and create Facebook ads.
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More than 15,000 users in total said they were having trouble accessing Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, according to Downdetector.
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Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage may be affecting a larger number of users.

Pentagon Leaker Jack Teixeira
Indicted on 6 Charges, Faces Prison

Former Air National Guardsman and accused Pentagon top secret document leaker Jack Teixeira has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Massachusetts on six felony counts, each carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The indictment, released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 15, accuses the 21-year-old Teixeira of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense.

Teixeira stands accused of committing one of the most serious U.S. security breaches since the infamous WikiLeaks fiasco in 2010, in which over 700,000 documents, videos, and diplomatic cables were leaked to the public.
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The leaked documents contained top-secret details about both allies and foes, covering topics from Ukraine’s air defenses amidst the Russian invasion to Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
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Teixeira was arrested in April after allegedly posting the highly classified materials on the messaging app Discord, sparking concerns about how a low-level airman could have access to Pentagon secrets.

President Joe Biden has ordered an investigation into why he was privy to such sensitive information, while two commanders in Teixeira’s unit were later suspended pending a probe.

I still  think it's extremely weird for a young guy like him to get some proper clearance to all of those classified or top secret documents as if he were just reading a simple menu at a restaurant.
It'd have been different if a colonel or general or a high level IT guy was involved somehow in this case.

Rep. Jim Jordan Threatens White House
With Subpoenas Over Social Media Censorship

Jordan made the demand in a June 15 letter (pdf) to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, asking him to turn over records on how the White House “coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

The request comes as the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that Jordan chairs has been probing allegations that the Biden administration pressured Big Tech to suppress dissenting views.

Jordan’s panel asked the White House in April to hand over information on its relationships with private sector entities in context of the probe, but Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, declined, according to the letter.

The reason provided by Sauber was that the panel should first seek the information from executive branch agencies, but Jordan dismissed this argument as “unpersuasive” because some of the materials sought are unique to the Executive Office of the President (EOP).
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He gave Zients until June 29 to comply with the records request, threatening to get them by subpoena if necessary.

Bankman-Fried to Get 2nd Trial on Bank Fraud, Bribery Counts

A U.S. judge on Thursday granted a request from prosecutors to try some of their charges against Sam Bankman-Fried in a second trial next year separate from his scheduled Oct. 2 trial over the collapse of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Bankman-Fried, 31, will be tried on March 11, 2024, on five counts, including bank fraud and bribing Chinese officials, that federal prosecutors in Manhattan brought after he was extradited from the Bahamas in December, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said in a written order. FTX was based in the Caribbean nation.

The onetime billionaire has pleaded not guilty to 13 fraud and conspiracy charges. An initial eight-count indictment filed in December accused him of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, lying to investors and lenders, and violating U.S. campaign finance laws.

Bankman-Fried has acknowledged inadequate risk management at FTX, but has denied stealing funds.

He had asked Kaplan to dismiss the five post-extradition charges, along with the campaign finance charge, because the Bahamas did not consent to them. Alternatively, he suggested they be tried separately.

Prosecutors on Wednesday said they would support a separate trial for the post-extradition charges because it was not clear when the Bahamas would grant its consent, as is required under an extradition treaty between the two countries.

[kyonides]

International Breaking News!

US Government Hit in Global Hacking Campaign

The nation’s cyber watchdog agency reported that the U.S. government was the target of a global hacking campaign that exploited a vulnerability in widely used software on June 15. However, the agency does not anticipate the attack to have a significant impact.

Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said in a statement that several federal agencies had been compromised after the discovery of a vulnerability in the file transfer software MOVEit.

CISA did not identify the affected agencies or specify how they were affected. It did not respond promptly to requests for additional comment.
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The online extortion group Cl0p, which has claimed responsibility for the MOVEit breach, has stated in the past that it would not use any data stolen from government agencies.

The group wrote that government agencies, cities, and police services shouldn’t worry because they had already erased the data.
...
The advisory aims to help organizations protect against the CL0P ransomware variant by providing essential information on its tactics and indicators.

The authorities recommend several actions to mitigate the cyber threats posed by CL0P ransomware. Organizations were advised to conduct an inventory of assets, identifying authorized and unauthorized devices and software.
...
The advisory includes information on recent activities of the CL0P Ransomware Gang, also known as TA505.

They exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer solution, infecting internet-facing web applications. The gang used a web shell named LEMURLOOT to steal data from underlying databases.

TA505 has previously targeted Accellion File Transfer Appliance devices and Fortra/Linoma GoAnywhere MFT servers.
...
Following the hacking of one of the agency’s law firms, a government agency in Australia in charge of keeping track of privacy violations was the target of a cyberattack.

After infiltrating the HWL Ebsworth database, the Russian hacker organization BlackCat, also known as AlphV, obtained information from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), according to a June 15 report.

One of the biggest business law companies in Australia, HWL Ebsworth, offers expert assistance to the OAIC.

This comes after AlphV stole four terabytes of corporate data, including personnel information, in April.
...
Just a day before the Australian hack, a senior U.S. cybersecurity official warned that Chinese state hackers would “almost certainly” conduct aggressive cyberattacks to disrupt critical U.S. infrastructure, such as pipelines and railways if a conflict breaks out with the United States.

At an event hosted by the Aspen Institute in Washington, Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, stated that Beijing is investing significantly in the development of cybertechnologies intended to sabotage U.S. infrastructure.

Russian Ransomware Gang Breaches
Energy Department and Other Federal Agencies

The Department of Energy and several other federal agencies were compromised in a Russian cyber-extortion gang’s global hack of a file-transfer program popular with corporations and governments, but the impact was not expected to be great, Homeland Security officials said Thursday.

But for others among what could be hundreds of victims from industry to higher education—including patrons of at least two state motor vehicle agencies—the hack was beginning to show some serious impacts.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters that unlike the meticulous, stealthy SolarWinds hacking campaign attributed to state-backed Russian intelligence agents that was months in the making, this campaign was short, relatively superficial and caught quickly.
...
Energy Department spokesperson Chad Smith said two agency entities were compromised but did not provide more detail.

Known victims to date include Louisiana’s Office of Motor Vehicles, Oregon’s Department of Transportation, the Nova Scotia provincial government, British Airways, the British Broadcasting Company and the UK drugstore chain Boots. The exploited program, MOVEit, is widely used by businesses to securely share files. Security experts say that can include sensitive financial and insurance data.

Louisiana officials said Thursday that people with a driver’s license or vehicle registration in the state likely had their personal information exposed. That included their name, address, Social Security number and birthdate. They encouraged Louisiana residents to freeze their credit to guard against identity theft.

The Oregon Department of Transportation confirmed Thursday that the attackers accessed personal information, some sensitive, for about 3.5 million people to whom the state issued identity cards or driver’s licenses.

The Cl0p ransomware syndicate behind the hack announced last week on its dark web site that its victims, who it suggested numbered in the hundreds, had until Wednesday to get in touch to negotiate a ransom or risk having sensitive stolen data dumped online.

The gang, among the world’s most prolific cybercrime syndicates, also claimed it would delete any data stolen from governments, cities, and police departments.

The parent company of MOVIEit’s U.S. maker, Progress Software, alerted customers to the breach on May 31 and issued a patch. But cybersecurity researchers say scores if not hundreds of companies could by then have had sensitive data quietly exfiltrated.

Once again, members of the Five Eyes got hacked. And yes, I truly believe that the NOTAM failures in US and Canada plus the Royal Mail's services were just a first attempt at disrupting the Western World infrastructure.

Oh and wait to see what China did this time! You'd have to check out our Chinese Hackers thread to find out all about their latest hacking schemes.

[kyonides]

Microsoft Says Early June Disruptions
to Outlook, Cloud Platform Were Cyberattacks

In early June, sporadic but serious service disruptions plagued Microsoft’s flagship office suite—including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps—and cloud computing platform. A shadowy hacktivist group claimed responsibility, saying it flooded the sites with junk traffic in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Initially reticent to name the cause, Microsoft has now disclosed that DDoS attacks by the murky upstart were indeed to blame.

But the software giant has offered few details—and did not immediately comment on how many customers were affected and whether the impact was global. A spokeswoman confirmed that the group that calls itself Anonymous Sudan was behind the attacks. It claimed responsibility on its Telegram social media channel at the time. Some security researchers believe the group to be Russian.

Microsoft’s explanation in a blog post Friday evening followed a request by The Associated Press two days earlier. Slim on details, the post said the attacks “temporarily impacted availability” of some services. It said the attackers were focused on “disruption and publicity” and likely used rented cloud infrastructure and virtual private networks to bombard Microsoft servers from so-called botnets of zombie computers around the globe.

Microsoft said there was no evidence any customer data was accessed or compromised.
...
He said Microsoft’s apparent unwillingness to provide an objective measure of customer impact “probably speaks to the magnitude.”

Microsoft dubbed the attackers Storm-1359, using a designator it assigns to groups whose affiliation it has not yet established. Cybersecurity sleuthing tends to take time—and even then can be a challenge if the adversary is skilled.

Pro-Russian hacking groups including Killnet—which the cybersecurity firm Mandiant says is Kremlin-affiliated—have been bombarding government and other websites of Ukraine’s allies with DDoS attacks. In October, some U.S. airport sites were hit.
...
Serious impacts from the Microsoft 365 office suite interruptions were reported on Monday June 5, peaking at 18,000 outage and problem reports on the tracker Downdetector shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern time.

On Twitter that day, Microsoft said Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business were affected.

Attacks continued through the week, with Microsoft confirming on June 9 that its Azure cloud computing platform had been affected.

On June 8, the computer security news site BleepingComputer.com reported that cloud-based OneDrive file-hosting was down globally for a time.

Microsoft said at the time that desktop OneDrive clients were not affected, BleepingComputer reported.