Security News

Apple has sued NSO Group and its parent company Q Cyber Technologies in a U.S. federal court holding it accountable for illegally targeting users with its Pegasus surveillance tool, marking yet another setback for the Israeli spyware vendor. "State-sponsored actors like the NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability. That needs to change," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering in a statement.

Apple today sued NSO Group, which sells spyware to governments and other organizations, for infecting and snooping on people's iPhones. In a strongly worded filing [PDF] Apple described NSO as "Amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse." Cupertino wants damages and a ban on NSO interacting or interfering any further with Apple services and products.

Apple has filed a lawsuit against Pegasus spyware-maker NSO Group and its parent company for the targeting and spying of Apple users with surveillance tech. NSO's FORCEDENTRY exploit was used by state-backed attackers to break into Apple devices to install the latest version of Pegasus spyware, as revealed by the Citizen Lab in August.

The US subsidiary of China Telecom has filed an emergency appeal it hopes will prevent the impending revocation of the company's license to operate in the USA, which the The US Federal Communications Commission terminated in October on grounds the carrier is a national security threat. The FCC terminated China Telecom Americas Corporation's authority to provide telecom services within the USA on October 26, citing the telecom's potential for exploitation, influence and control by the Chinese government and other national security risks, such as the ability to access or disrupt US communication leading to espionage and other harmful activities.

Facebook has sued a Ukrainian national for allegedly harvesting and selling personal data describing 178 million of the Social NetworkTM's users - actions it says violates the service's terms of service. The suit alleges that Alexander Alexandrovich Solonchenko created millions of virtual Android devices, each with a different phone number, and used them to deliver automated requests to Facebook systems using the Messenger app.

Under the new Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative that the U.S. Department of Justice announced today, government contractors are accountable in a civil court if they don't report a breach or fail to meet required cybersecurity standards. Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said that the initiative allows the DoJ to pursue government contractors that keep silent about a breach incident or don't comply with cybersecurity standards.

When Colorado resident Andrew Schober downloaded the Electrum Atom Bitcoin wallet from Reddit, he also picked up a piece of clipboard hijacking malware that eventually redirected his 16.4552 Bitcoin to a wallet controlled by two teenagers living in the U.K. At today's price, 16.4552 Bitcoin would be worth ~$773,000. Because they were juveniles at the time of the alleged theft, Schober is suing their parents for the nearly $1 million he lost in the heist.

A company is suing the Police Digital Service over a framework worth up to £18m after losing a bid to provide a mass surveillance platform, claiming police managers broke laws on the awarding of public contracts. Excession Technologies Ltd is suing the organisation formerly known as the Police ICT Company on the grounds that it broke the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations after allegedly misunderstanding Excession's platform was capable of doing.

Facebook on Tuesday revealed it filed two separate legal actions against perpetrators who abused its ad platform to run deceptive advertisements in violation of the company's Terms and Advertising Policies. "In the second case, the defendants are a group of individuals located in Vietnam who got users to self-compromise their Facebook accounts and ran millions of dollars of unauthorized ads."

Facebook has filed lawsuits against two groups of suspects who took over advertising agency employees' accounts and abused its ad platform to run unauthorized or deceptive ads. The social network says that four Vietnamese nationals took over the Facebook accounts of multiple employees working at marketing and advertising agencies using a technique known as session theft.