~slashdot-your-right | Bookmarks (335)

A bipartisan group of 12 senators has urged the TSA inspector general to investigate the agency's use of facial recognition technology, citing concerns over privacy, civil liberties, and its expansion to over 430 airports without sufficient safeguards or proven effectiveness. Gizmodo reports: "This technology will soon be in use at hundreds of major and mid-size airports without an independent evaluation of the technology's precision...

A security researcher discovered an unprotected database belonging to SL Data Services containing over 600,000 sensitive files, including criminal histories and background checks with names, addresses, and social media accounts. The Register reports: We don't know how long the personal information was openly accessible. Infosec specialist Jeremiah Fowler says he found the Amazon S3 bucket in October and reported it to the data collection...

A U.S. federal appeals court ruled that sanctions against Tornado Cash, a crypto transaction anonymization service, must be abandoned, stating that its immutable smart contracts do not constitute "property" under U.S. law and that the Treasury overstepped its authority. The ruling is available here (PDF). CoinDesk reports: The decision answers a controversial privacy debate on whether the government -- via a sanctions list maintained...

The FTC has opened a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft, including of its software licensing and cloud computing business. Bloomberg first reported the news. Reuters reports: The probe was approved by FTC Chair Lina Khan ahead of her likely departure in January. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and the expectation he will appoint a fellow Republican with a softer approach toward...

A piracy ring that gave 22 million subscribers in Europe cheap access to content stolen from international streaming services has been shut down by Italian authorities after a two-year investigation. From a report: The criminal enterprise used a complex international IT system to "capture and resell" live programming and other on-demand content from companies including sports broadcaster DAZN, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount, Sky and...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Security researchers have uncovered two previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited by RomCom, a Russian-linked hacking group, to target Firefox browser users and Windows device owners across Europe and North America. RomCom is a cybercrime group that is known to carry out cyberattacks and other digital intrusions for the Russian government. The group...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The founder of an artificial intelligence start-up focused on education was arrested and charged with defrauding her investors, lying about the company's profits and falsely claiming that some of the largest school districts in the country, including New York City's, were her customers. The founder, Joanna Smith-Griffin, started the company, AllHere Education, in...

Interpol arrested 1,006 suspects in Africa during a massive two-month operation, clamping down on cybercrime that left tens of thousands of victims, including some who were trafficked, and produced millions in financial damages, the global police organization said Tuesday. From a report: Operation Serengeti, a joint operation with Afripol, the African Union's police agency, ran from Sept. 2 to Oct. 31 in 19 African...

Blue Yonder, a Panasonic subsidiary specializing in AI-driven supply chain solutions, experienced a recent ransomware attack that impacted many of its customers. "Among its 3,000 customers are high-profile organizations like DHL, Renault, Bayer, Morrisons, Nestle, 3M, Tesco, Starbucks, Ace Hardware, Procter & Gamble, Sainsbury, and 7-Eleven," reports BleepingComputer. From the report: On Friday, the company warned that it was experiencing disruptions to its managed...

The U.S. is preparing to impose new sanctions targeting 200 Chinese chipmakers and potentially restricting the export of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The move is intended to further hinder China's semiconductor and AI advancements. Tom's Hardware reports: The update sheds light on the Biden administration's recent efforts to impose stricter regulations on chip manufacturers in China. The latest swarm of sanctions reportedly targets roughly...

A new bill introduced by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt) aims to make it easier for human creators to find out if their work was used without permission to train artificial intelligence. NBC News reports: The Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act would enable copyright holders to subpoena training records of generative AI models, if the holder can declare a "good faith...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court signaled it may take up a case that could determine whether Internet service providers must terminate users who are accused of copyright infringement. In an order (PDF) issued today, the court invited the Department of Justice's solicitor general to file a brief "expressing the views of the United States." In Sony Music...

Some days more than half of California's available solar power goes to waste, according to research from the California Institute for Energy and Environment. "In the last 12 months, California's solar farms have curtailed production of more than 3 million megawatt hours of solar energy," according to a data analysis by the Los Angeles Times — enough to power 518,000 California homes for a...

"At points there was fear the talks would implode, as groups representing vulnerable small island states and the least-developed countries walked out of negotiations Saturday," according to a new report from CNN. But after weeks of international climate talks at COP29, "the world agreed to a new climate deal... "with wealthy countries pledging to provide $300 billion annually by 2035 to poorer countries to...

On November 24th, 1971 — 53 years ago today — a mysterious man jumped out of an airplane clutching $200,000 in ransom money. (He'd extorted it from the airline by claiming he had a bomb, and it's still "the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation," according to Wikipedia.) Will modern technology finally let us solve the case —...

America's Justice Department "has ordered all consensual searches by drug enforcement agents conducted at the nation's airports stopped," reports Georgia's local TV station Atlanta News First — after their series of investigations "uncovered how the agents often search innocent passengers at airport gates, looking for cash." On Thursday, the department made public a November 12, 2024, directive from the deputy attorney general to the...

NBC News reports that a newly identified chemical byproduct "may be present in drinking water in about a third of U.S. homes, a study found." "Scientists do not yet know whether the byproduct is dangerous. But some are worried that it could have toxic properties because of similarities to other chemicals of concern." The newly identified substance, named "chloronitramide anion," is produced when water...

Meta wants to force Apple and Google to verify the ages of people downloading apps from their app stores, reports the Washington Post — and now Meta's campaign "is picking up momentum" with legislators in the U.S. Congress. Federal and state lawmakers have recently proposed a raft of measures requiring that platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram block users under a certain age...

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNET: Meta says it's taken down more than 2 million accounts this year linked to overseas criminal gangs behind scam operations that human rights activists say forced hundreds of thousands of people to work as scammers and cost victims worldwide billions of dollars. In a Thursday blog post, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp says the...

Longtime Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from Gizmodo: Hackers for the Chinese government were able to deeply penetrate U.S. telecommunications infrastructure in ways that President Joe Biden's administration hasn't yet acknowledged, according to new reports from the Washington Post and New York Times. The hackers were able to listen to phone calls and read text messages, reportedly exploiting the system U.S. authorities use...

"Steven Adair, of cybersecurity firm Veloxity, revealed at the Cyberwarcon security conference how Russian hackers were able to daisy-chain as many as three separate Wi-Fi networks in their efforts to attack victims," writes Longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. Wired reports: Adair says that Volexity first began investigating the breach of its DC customer's network in the first months of 2022, when the company saw...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has sued one of its former engineers in Texas federal court, accusing him of stealing trade secrets related to its chip designs and sharing them publicly on the internet. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday (PDF), said that Harshit Roy "touted his dominion" over the secrets in social media posts, tagging competitors and making threatening statements...

Netflix is looking toward Discord for help in figuring out who, exactly, is leaking unreleased footage from some of its popular shows. From a report: The Northern District of California court issued a subpoena on Thursday to compel Discord to share information that can help identify a Discord user who's reportedly involved in leaking episodes and images from Netflix shows like Arcane and Squid...

The Register's Simon Sharwood reports: Japan's National Consumer Affairs Center on Wednesday suggested citizens start "digital end of life planning" and offered tips on how to do it. The Center's somewhat maudlin advice is motivated by recent incidents in which citizens struggled to cancel subscriptions their loved ones signed up for before their demise, because they didn't know their usernames or passwords. The resulting...