Category: Tech

Over the past year, new artificial intelligence tools and services have been surfacing everywhere. This AI boom followed the success of ChatGPT and many people believe these recent developments are just the beginning. While entrepreneurs and the public at large are mostly focused on the new possibilities the technology offers, many copyright holders are focused on potential threats. This includes…

Spanish airline Air Europa, the country’s third-largest airline and a member of the SkyTeam alliance, warned customers on Monday to cancel their credit cards after attackers accessed their card information in a recent data breach. “We inform you that a cybersecurity incident was recently detected in one of our systems consisting of possible unauthorized access to your bank card data,”…

Israel has incurred several cyberattacks following the large-scale surprise attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas. Among the recorded incidents was an attack on the country’s services and government information website, resulting in the portal’s connectivity failure. It was claimed by hacktivists called Killnet, a pro-Russian cyber group that gained notoriety after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “Israeli government, you are…

The Wall Street Journal wrote on Thursday that MGM Resorts International didn’t pay the ransomware attackers who broke into its systems last month, forcing the company to shut down systems at several of its hotels and casinos. The hack kept many waiting to check into their rooms, including FTC chair Lina Kahn, who was in Las Vegas, Nevada to attend…

It’s been almost 10 months since a trial date was set in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, and with all of the other big tech cases going on right now, including Google’s other antitrust proceedings, you’d be forgiven for forgetting about this one. But believe it or not, the trial will start in less than a month, on November 6th,…

Reddit’s latest transparency report shows a modest increase in DMCA takedown notices. The number of copyright infringement-related user- and subreddit bans has declined, however. The latest data follows a hectic period at Reddit, where protests over an API policy change triggered a ‘dramatic’ 1169% increase in user data requests. With millions of daily users, Reddit is without a doubt one…

23andMe has confirmed to BleepingComputer that it is aware of user data from its platform circulating on hacker forums and attributes the leak to a credential-stuffing attack. 23andMe is a U.S. biotechnology and genomics firm offering genetic testing services to customers who send a saliva sample to its labs and get back an ancestry and genetic predispositions report. Recently, a threat…

MGM Resorts reveals that last month’s cyberattack cost the company $100 million and allowed the hackers to steal customers’ personal information. The hospitality and entertainment giant disclosed a cybersecurity issue on September 11, 2023, which impacted its main website, online reservations systems, and in-casino services like slot machines, credit card terminals, and ATMs. A few days later, it was revealed that the…

In just a few months, “AI Hub” became a massively popular Discord server with over half a million members. While copyright infringement was strictly forbidden, not all users stuck to the rules. This previously raised the attention of the RIAA, and now appears to have caused the server’s downfall after it was suddenly shut down. Artificial intelligence is booming. Dozens…

About 100,000 industrial control systems (ICS) were found on the public web, exposed to attackers probing them for vulnerabilities and at risk of unauthorized access. Among them are power grids, traffic light systems, security and water systems. Exposed ICSs include units (sensors, actuators, switches, building management systems, and automatic tank gauges) for critical infrastructure systems. Cybersecurity company BitSight alerted of the…

I know many of you have heard this before, but Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” concept is such a useful framework to think about things: first, companies are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. As I’ve highlighted,…

This month, the Philippines celebrates its creative industries by dedicating a special month to their work. On top of that, the Government presented a long-awaited ‘gift’. The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) announced that local site-blocking plans are about to come to fruition. IPOPHL Director General Rowel Barba signed a memorandum that will go into effect in late…

Following the creation of its Hadopi anti-piracy agency over 13 years ago, France monitored and stored data on millions of users suspected of infringing copyrights. The majority were BitTorrent users and the plan was to use evidence of their piracy activities as a basis for escalating actions including warnings, fines, and ultimately, internet disconnections. Operating the program for a decade…

Unintended Consequences We’ve spilled a great deal of ink discussing the GDPR and its failures and unintended consequences. The European data privacy law that was ostensibly built to protect the data of private citizens, but which was also expected to result in heavy fines for primarily American internet companies, has mostly failed to do either. While the larger American internet…

Chinese hackers reportedly stole tens of thousands of emails from U.S. State Department accounts after breaching Microsoft’s cloud-based Exchange email platform in May. During a recent Senate staff briefing, U.S. State Department officials disclosed that the attackers stole at least 60,000 emails from Outlook accounts belonging to State Department officials stationed in East Asia, the Pacific, and Europe, as Reuters first…

Air Canada, the flag carrier and the largest airline of Canada, disclosed a cyber security incident this week in which hackers “briefly” obtained limited access to its internal systems. According to the airline, the incident resulted in the theft of a limited amount of personal information of some of its employees and “certain records.” Customer data was not affected. Hackers “briefly”…