Security News
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned this week that it will crack down on tech companies' illegal use and sharing of highly sensitive data and false claims about data anonymization. "While many consumers may happily offer their location data in exchange for real-time crowd-sourced advice on the fastest route home, they likely think differently about having their thinly-disguised online identity associated with the frequency of their visits to a therapist or cancer doctor," FTC's Kristin Cohen said.
Crypto ATMs offering cryptoasset exchange services in the UK must be registered with [the FCA] and comply with UK Money Laundering Regulations. If you're buying or selling cryptocoins via an existing payment card account or mobile phone payment system, from an ATM in a shopping centre, you'd think that the operation would be at least as trackable as any transaction involving a non-cryptocurrency account, such as a big-money purchase in a department store or luxury brand shop.
An Israeli citizen who operated DeepDotWeb, a news site and review site for dark web sites, has received a sentence of 97 months in prison for money laundering and was ordered to forfeit $8,414,173. The DeepDotWeb site didn't host anything malicious or harmful but directly linked to various dark web marketplaces selling illegal goods.
An Israeli citizen who operated DeepDotWeb, a news site and review site for dark web sites, has received a sentence of 97 months in prison for money laundering and was ordered to forfeit $8,414,173. The DeepDotWeb site didn't host anything malicious or harmful but directly linked to various dark web marketplaces selling illegal goods.
The US Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division are launching a joint public inquiry as a first step to modernising merger guidelines and preventing anticompetitive deals. FTC chair Lina Khan said it was time for a merger review because the number of global deals reached in 2021 was the highest ever recorded - at a whopping $5.8 trillion - with the DoJ receiving twice the number of merger filings as in 2020.
Law enforcement authorities arrested 150 suspects allegedly involved in selling and buying illicit goods on DarkMarket, the largest illegal marketplace on the dark web when it was taken down in January 2021. The arrests are the result of a coordinated international operation dubbed Dark HunTOR that lasted ten months and involved police forces and investigators from nine countries.
A Pakistani fraudster was sentenced to 12 years in prison earlier this week after AT&T, the world's largest telecommunications company, lost over $200 million after he and his co-conspirators coordinated a seven-year scheme that led to the fraudulent unlocking of almost 2 million phones. Throughout this operation, Muhammad Fahd - the scheme leader - bribed multiple AT&T employees to do his bidding, including unlocking phones, giving him access to their credentials, and installing malware that gave him remote access to the mobile carrier's servers.
That's welcome news for businesses because illegal robocalls directly affect their bottom lines and brands in a variety of ways - including ones that aren't obvious. Consumers are inundated with so many illegal robocalls that when they see a call from an unfamiliar or unidentified number, they let it drop into voice mail 76 percent of the time.
Now the content-delivery network Akamai has reported on a new method: a botnet that uses the Bitcoin blockchain ledger. Blockchains are a type of "Distributed ledger": a record of all transactions since the beginning, and everyone using the blockchain needs to have access to - and reference - a copy of it.
For the wider population, hacking has become synonymous with nefarious activities because - for the vast majority of people who experience it - it's in a criminal context. Regular Register readers can differentiate between criminal hackers who break the law and ruin people's lives, and hardware and software hackers who ingeniously lash together systems and perform miracles to get things running.