Security News

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposed today a record-breaking $300 million fine against an auto warranty robocall operation that made billions of calls to more than 550 million phones across the United States. Today's announcement follows previous action taken by the FCC in July when the federal government agency ordered 8 U.S.-based voice service providers to stop offering their services to the operation behind these auto warranty scam robocalls within 48 hours.

One of the commissioners of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has renewed calls asking for Apple and Google to boot the popular video-sharing platform TikTok from their app stores citing "Its pattern of surreptitious data practices." "It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing's apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data," Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the FCC, wrote in a letter to Apple and Google's chief executives.

FCC adds Kaspersky, Chinese companies to list of potential threats to national security. The Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau has added three companies to the list of communications equipment and services that pose a threat to national security through access to user information.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Friday moved to add Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab to the "Covered List" of companies that pose an "Unacceptable risk to the national security" of the country. Also added alongside Kaspersky were China Telecom Corp and China Mobile International USA. The block list includes information security products, solutions, and services supplied, directly or indirectly, by the company or any of its predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries, or affiliates.

The US Federal Communications Commission today proposed the largest-ever fine against a robocaller for Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations. The Commission wants to hit Florida-based lead generator Interstate Brokers with a $45 million TCPA fine for making more than 500,000 unlawful robocalls without an emergency purpose or the consumers' prior express consent.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed more rigorous data breach reporting requirements for telecom carriers in response to breaches that recently hit the telecommunications industry. "I look forward to having my colleagues join me in taking a fresh look at our data breach reporting rules to better protect consumers, increase security, and reduce the impact of future breaches."

The Federal Communications Commission announced earlier this week that phone companies are now required to filter calls from providers who haven't complied with a deadline to block illegal robocalls expired on September 28th. They can only accept calls from voice service providers registered in the Robocall Mitigation Database who have implemented caller ID authentication technology for calls carried made over Internet Protocol networks or filed a robocall mitigation plan with the FCC. "This technology is critical to protecting Americans from scams using spoofed robocalls because it erodes the ability of callers to illegally spoof a caller ID, which scammers use to trick Americans into answering their phones when they shouldn't," the FCC explains. To make it easy to comply with this robocall blocking deadline, the FCC provides an email subscription service that telecom companies can use to keep track of changes to the Robocall Mitigation Database.

The Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. this week announced that it started to work on rules that would pull the brake on SIM swapping attacks. The decision comes after the agency "Received numerous complaints from consumers who have suffered significant distress, inconvenience, and financial harm as a result of SIM swapping and port-out fraud."

A secret campaign by the broadband industry to offer support to roll back net neutrality resulted in fake comments comprising more than 40 percent of those sent to the FCC during the public comments phase of its decision, according to the report by the New York State Office of the Attorney General. On the other side of the debate, a 19-year-old college student who opposed the repeal of net neutrality managed to file more than 7.7 million pro-neutrality comments with the FCC by fabricating people's names and addresses using software.

Last Thursday, Rosenworcel made a statement on future priorities by reestablishing the Communications, Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council with a focus on 5g networks and software and cloud services vulnerabilities. "That is why I am refocusing and revitalizing the FCC's Communications, Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council for the challenges of today and tomorrow. The damage from recent supply chain attacks, like the SolarWinds software breach, demonstrates our need for a coordinated, multifaceted, and strategic approach to protecting our networks from all threats."