Security News
Taiwanese chip-maker United Microelectronics Corporation will plead guilty to theft of trade secrets from Micron Technologies and pay a $60m fine to the USA. The case was brought in 2018 when the US Department of Justice alleged that UMC and Chinese outfit Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit conspired to steal Micron's DRAM technology, including details of manufacturing processes, in order to start their own DRAM business. The DoJ acted against UMC under its "Initiative to Combat Chinese Economic Espionage", a Trump administration programme that aims to protect American intellectual property and lets the US government enforce forfeitures and fines.
The Department of Justice on Monday announced charges against six Russian nationals who are allegedly tied to the Sandworm APT. The threat group is believed to have launched several high-profile cyberattacks over the past few years - including the destructive NotPetya cyberattack that targeted hundreds of firms and hospitals worldwide in 2017. According to the DOJ complaint, the six Russian nationals are tied to a division of the Russian military intelligence service and also affiliated with the APT Sandworm, also known as TeleBots.
US prosecutors claim six people bribed corrupt Amazon insiders to rig the the web giant's Marketplace in their favor and leak terabytes of data including some search algorithms. In an indictment [PDF] filed late last week, the Dept of Justice asserted that the six defendants paid over US$100,000 to "Complicit Amazon employees and contractors." The DoJ claims at least ten Amazonians took the crooked coin and "Baselessly and fraudulently conferred tens of millions of dollars of competitive benefits on hundreds of 3P seller accounts that the defendants purported to represent".
The Department of Justice has indicted two hackers - including one teenager - for allegedly vandalizing more than 50 websites hosted in the U.S. with pro-Iran messages. The two allegedly replaced the content of these websites with pictures of Soleimani against a background of the Iranian flag, along with the message, in English, "Down with America." The two hackers allegedly took credit online for their website defacements.
The U.S. government aims to seize control of 280 illegal cryptocurrency accounts it claims were used by North Korean state-sponsored attackers in their efforts to hack cryptocurrency exchanges and funnel hundreds of millions in stolen funds through a Chinese money-laundering network. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint against North Korea Thursday as part of a broader effort to shut down that it said were state-sponsored cyberattacks on currency exchanges by hackers.
House Democrats on Wednesday decided to abandon a vote on the reauthorization of several government surveillance programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A similar amendment proposed earlier this week by Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Warren Davidson saw broad support in the House of Representatives, but the vote on the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act was abandoned on Wednesday, after both the Department of Justice and President Donald Trump publicly opposed the bill.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday that the FBI managed to gain access to the data stored on two iPhones belonging to an individual who last year killed and wounded several people at a United States naval base. U.S. Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray announced on Monday that the FBI managed to access the data stored on the two locked iPhones.
The Department of Justice has raised its first federal court action against online fraud relating to the coronavirus pandemic, on Sunday taking steps to shutter a fraudulent website that claimed to give away free coronavirus vaccines. The website was live as of March 21, according to the DoJ; but as of Monday, the website is currently down.
The Department of Justice has raised its first federal court action against online fraud relating to the coronavirus pandemic, on Sunday taking steps to shutter a fraudulent website that claimed to give away free coronavirus vaccines. The website was live as of March 21, according to the DoJ; but as of Monday, the website is currently down.
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked victims of the Quantum Stresser DDoS-for-hire service, whose operator was recently sentenced, to come forward. According to authorities, the service had roughly 70-80,000 subscribers between 2011 and 2018, and in 2018 customers launched or attempted to launch approximately 50,000 DDoS attacks aimed at individuals or organizations.