Cyberlaw

A group known for Nintendo Switch piracy has obtained and distributed a full file dump of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, set to release in two weeks on December 7th. While early game leaks are not uncommon, a leak this far in advance is quite unusual, especially a leak of a game as hotly anticipated as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Apple will appear before the U.S. Supreme Court today to argue that a lawsuit brought against it is invalid. Apple claims that the lawsuit, which alleges that the iOS App Store creates a monopoly for the company, could only be brought by app developers, not the end users. If Apple is successful, then the case will be dismissed. Otherwise, Apple could be taken to court for potentially monopolistic practices.

The UK Parliament has seized important internal Facebook documents from an executive of the software start-up Six4Three. The unprecedented move is believed to be partly in response for Mark Zuckerberg’s failure to stand before British politicians and answer questions in regard to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook is also facing accusations that employees knew about privacy policy loopholes and assisted in exploiting them.

In a report published by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), it was revealed that LinkedIn has been using 18 million non-user emails to generate targeted ads on Facebook. It was also shown that LinkedIn has been using the personal data of its users to automatically build professional networks.

According to malware researcher Lukas Stefanko, Google Play users have installed a number of driving game apps that are actually malware. The 13 affected apps, which all come from the same developer, had been downloaded and installed over half a million times before Google pulled them from its store. Two of the apps had actually been trending, offering greater visibility to users.

Two men have been jailed in England for their parts in the hacking of TalkTalk in 2015, which cost the British telecoms company an estimated £77 million (~ US$98.5 million). TalkTalk has already been fined £400,000 (~ US$512,000) for having inadequate security procedures.

Chinese officials, citing "massive evidence," have accused Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix of colluding and fixing the price of DRAM. If the allegations are true, the three largest DRAM manufacturers in the world would be directly responsible for the massive price increase for DRAM over the past few years. This isn't the first time these three companies have been accused of price-fixing. Back in 2005, all three pled guilty to similar charges levied by the US Department of Justice.

Tumblr's disappearance from Apple's App Store finally has an official reason: what was first simply described as "an issue" was, in fact, child pornography that slipped through the filters — enough of it to make the app vanish. This is not the first time Tumblr has run into pornography-related problems — most likely not the last time, either.

Another industry may soon be replaced by robots - IBM's Watson AI scripted a 60-second commercial for luxury car brand Lexus. Watson was fed 15 years worth of award-winning commercials and was able to outline and script the basis of the commercial. After a bit of editing by IBM researchers, Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald shot the commercial after being convinced by the "melodrama of the story."

The British regulator Ofcom has announced that it has fined EE and Virgin Media £6.3 million (~ US$8.035 million) and £7 million (~ US$8.928 million) respectively. The regulator has fined the two companies principally for overcharging early-exit fees to hundreds of thousands of customers and for not explaining contractual terms clearly enough.

In a paper presented at a biometric securities conference, a research team from NYU showed off a new algorithm for cracking fingerprint readers. The system, named "DeepMasterPrints," operates in similar fashion to a dictionary attack for passwords. DeepMasterPrints uses a library of fingerprint images and permutes them until it finds a match.

Nintendo has won $12 million in a settlement with LoveRoms.com and LoveRETRO.co, two ROM distribution sites it sued this past summer. The couple that operated the two sites admitted that they participated in copyright infringement and agreed to the $12 million judgement against them. While it's unlikely the couple will have to pay the full judgement, this ruling will surely send a message to other ROM sites that distribute ROMs of Nintendo games.

CloudFlare has released a new app that will route your Android device's internet traffic through its local services, effectively changing your phone's DNS. While this may be a boon for privacy advocates that bemoan the lack of DNS server choice in Android 8.1 (and below), there are a few caveats. The biggest is that the app acts as a VPN, preventing users from accessing any other VPN at the same time.

In a deal struck with Apple to begin selling the newest Apple products, Amazon has announced it will ban unauthorized third-party sellers from listing or selling Apple products through Amazon. While sellers can become an authorized Apple reseller, the qualifications are far out of reach for most small businesses. This move will inevitably kill many small businesses and Apple resellers that rely on Amazon as a storefront.

After failing to fulfill a contract with Snapchat's PR firm, PR Consultants (PRC), Instagram influencer and actor Luka Sabbat is being sued by PRC for $90,000. Sabbat signed a contract with PRC to promote Snapchat's Spectacles v2 with some Instagram posts and real-world appearances, but he failed to fulfill the terms of the contract.

Google's latest iteration of the reCAPTCHA system, reCAPTCHA v3, is now available to website administrators and webmasters. reCAPTCHA v3 runs in the background, tracking user behavior and assigning a risk score based on that behavior. Administrators can use this score to assign thresholds requiring further authentication if needed, allowing the bot-battling system to run unobtrusively for most users.

In a recent study concerning children and media consumption, researchers discovered that the majority of apps targeted at children 5 years of age and younger contained advertising. Some of these ads were not clearly marked, were difficult to close, or contained disturbing imagery. Additionally, some of the ads pushed the user to make purchases, a clear violation of the FTC's rules regarding ads used in children's media.

Google launched a new grant initiative today, seeking to fund teams that want to develop "AI for social good." Dubbed the AI Impact Challenge, the initiative will award $25 million across multiple teams that qualify based on the scalability, feasibility, and impact their project can have.

Twitter might remove the red heart-shaped Like button soon as per reports by The Telegraph. According to the report, the decision to remove the Like button is to foster a healthier climate for debate. Twitterati, on the other hand, aren't too happy with the proposal.

Gab, a social media alternative to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, has come under fire yet again for posts from its users. This time, anti-Semitic posts from the Pittsburgh shooter, who shot and killed 11 people in a synagogue yesterday, prompted PayPal to ban Gab from its payment services and platform.

A list of proposed rules put out by the U.S. Copyright Office would make jailbreaking devices like smartphones and smart speakers completely legal, if adopted. Jailbreaking, or circumventing DRM, is currently in a legally grey area. If these rules are implemented, then people could create their own tools to jailbreak a device for repair purposes. However, jailbreaking tools could not be distributed under these rules.

Web service provider Yahoo has agreed to pay out US$50 million in damages in response to the huge data breaches the company suffered from in 2013 and 2014. Once the settlement has been legally approved, Yahoo accountholders affected by the breaches will be able to make financial claims against the company and gain free access to a credit-monitoring service.

Supermicro has sent out a letter to its customers to reassure them that the tech company will be carrying out a thorough internal review of its hardware in regard to allegations made by a Bloomberg article. The news item argued that products from Supermicro had been compromised by tiny spy chips, supposedly planted by Chinese intelligence officers.

The European Union (EU) has been planning legislation to curb the at-least perceived tax-dodging practices of big tech firms with bases within the union. It involves taxing revenues from online ads at the per-EU point of target. This, as politicians such as Bruno Le Maire assert, will ensure that companies such as Apple pay a more proportionate tax burden.

DuckDuckGo is quickly becoming a popular alternative to Google's increasingly invasive search engine. The privacy-focused search tool just announced hitting 30 million searches a day. While this is a far cry from the 3.5+ billion searches Google enjoys, it marks a 50% growth for DuckDuckGo, positioning the search engine for rapid growth without relying on tracking users.

The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a statement that seems to refute Bloomberg’s claim that a significant number of US companies had been compromised due to clandestine microchips reporting sensitive data back to China. Amazon Web Services and Apple have also rebuked the article’s content.

Finally, after a month since the law was approved by California's legislative branch, Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law SB822, their Net Neutrality legislation. However, just hours after the law was signed, the Department of Justice announced its intention to sue California for enacting what it claims is an illegal law.

A Facebook breach has compromised almost 50 million accounts. After discovering the breach on September 25, the company reset the access tokens of the 50 million affected accounts and 40 million others as a precautionary step. The attackers accessed the accounts via a vulnerability involving Facebook's access tokens which keep users logged in.

The latest version of Google's Chrome browser will now automatically log users in if they log into any Google service. This, in turn, opens the door for the user's browsing data to be accessed by Google. While this isn't the case now (Chrome's sync features aren't turned on by default), it raises several red flags as to the future of the privacy of user's browsing data.

In June 2017, the New York Times's request to view server information related to public comments on the repeal of Net Neutrality was denied on the grounds that it would reveal private information. Now, after months of back and forth attempts to retrieve at least some information, the NYT has finally decided to sue.

Over the past week, fewer and fewer Chinese users have been able to access Twitch. As of September 20th, Twitch's site and official iOS App were shut down in China, rendering them inaccessible within the nation. While the reason for the ban is unknown, it is not unlike other censorship measures exercised by China.

Less than 24 hours after its launch, Nintendo's Switch Online service has already been hacked to allow gamers to load their own custom NES ROMs in to the NES library. The process, which seems to be simple, is possible because of Nintendo's use of common .nes ROM files, the same filetype used by ROM sites online.

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) may have opened up a criminal investigation into Telsa incorporated after statements made by CEO Elon Musk last month. Two sources familiar with the company and this matter have stated that DOJ is investigating potential fraud. This investigation, if true, would coincide with a similar investigation started by the SEC last month.

After a highly public campaign to pass the bill SB822, which will serve as a replacement for the FCC's Net Neutrality rules, the legislative branch of California has approved the bill. Assuming the Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signs the SB822, California will be yet another state that has its own Net Neutrality laws.

Yahoo, which is now a part of Oath Inc., has been reported to persist in the sale of user email data to advertisers. This practice, which Google for one has sworn off in the past, may include the scanning of information concerning purchases sent by online retailers.

Microsoft has confirmed that it has fired four employees and terminated business relationships with four partners in Hungary over ongoing probings for bribery and corruption. The investigation is on for sale of Microsoft software to middlemen for a discounted price who then resold the same to the Hungarian Government at full price.

A Melbourne, Australia based teenager was able to remotely hack and access some of Apple's secure servers for over a year, downloading over 90 GB of secure files and customer information. Using hacking software to obtain authorized keys for logging in, the teen hacked the company because he has always "dreamed of" working there.

Although ZTE can sell its products to the civilian consumers all over the US, a recent bill that was signed by Donal Trump bans the government use of any device made by the Chinese brand due to security issues. Even more, this bill also forbids the use of Huawei hardware for the same reason.

The GDPR was instituted in May 2018. However, it appears that over a thousand websites (at least) have not complied with it. Therefore, users with EU IP addresses cannot access their content. An independent archivist maintains a website listing examples of them associated with US newspapers.

Smartphone users in India are reporting seeing an entry for a contact in their phonebook that purportedly belongs to a Government authority. The number apparently was added without users' consent and Google has now issued a clarification that this contact entry was 'inadvertently coded' in Android releases seeded to Indian OEMs. Google's statement, however, creates more questions than answers.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has instructed Government agencies to come up with procedures to remove Adobe Flash from all US Government sites and PCs by August 1, 2019 citing Adobe's end of Flash support by end of 2020. This move is being done to avoid a Windows XP-like situation, which some Government agencies are apparently still using.

The ubiquitous and all-pervasive Wi-Fi is receiving its first major update in 14 years with the announcement of the WPA3 authentication protocol by the Wi-Fi Alliance. WPA3 is the successor to WPA2, which was the target of many hackers in the last year and comes with new features that prevent offline dictionary attacks and enable forward secrecy. The protocol is available for implementation in new routers today and is expected to go mainstream by 2019.

In a second letter this month, lawmakers are again expressing concern that Google has been showing preference in working with the Chinese telecommunications company rather than the U.S. army. The search giant only sees Huawei as just one of many contractors under its belt with no current plans to cease cooperation for now.

Tron's creator Justin Sun hopes to make the Internet more decentralized and in order to further this plan he just bought BitTorrent Inc. The popular peer-to-peer sharing platform combined with blockchain tech could revolutionize the way people access data over the Internet and may give a significant boost to the Tron coin adoption.

A user on Reddit has narrated the tales of their trip into China, which saw the country’s border police accost them and install what was almost definitely surveillance software on their Android devices.

Facebook will be banned in Papua New Guinea for a month, but the starting day has not been unveiled yet. The reason for this is to allow the government's analysts to track down those behind fake accounts, adult uploads, and those who introduce and promote fake news and misleading information.

An article from English-language newspaper The Korea Times has revealed that PUBG Corporation has filed a lawsuit in the Seoul Central District Court against Epic Games, the developer of battle royale rival Fortnite. PUBG Corporation, which is a subsidiary of the South Korean company Bluehole, apparently filed the lawsuit back in January.

A report by The New York Times has stated that the Trump administration has worked out a deal that would prevent ZTE from complete collapse. According to a source familiar with the matter, ZTE would have to comply with a number of demands from the US Department of Commerce but by doing so would be able to remain in business.

It looked like Bitcoin could finally break the 10K line after the Consensus annual event, but the US Justice Department thwarted all bullish plans, triggering a considerable devaluation. In just 5 days, Bitcoin dropped from ~US$8,400 to almost US$7,000 as the DoJ is currently investigating price manipulation schemes pulled by crypto traders.

There has been a report published stating at least 500,000 networking devices around the world have been infected by malware known as VPNFilter. It has been speculated that Russian state-sponsored hackers are behind the attack due to the activity specifically aimed at devices based in the Ukraine. Apparently, VPNFilter offers both intelligence-gathering and destructive capabilities.