In the span of just 48 hours this week, two separate juries in two different US states delivered verdicts that could reshape the entire social media industry — not because of the dollar amounts involved, but because of what those verdicts legally establish for the first time. On Tuesday, March 24, a jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million for failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram. Less than 24 hours later, on Wednesday, March 25, a jury in Los Angeles found both Meta and Google (YouTube) liable for engineering addiction in young users — finding them negligent in the design of their platforms and awarding a further $6 million in damages. Two days. Two states. Two juries. Both pointing at the same conclusion: that Big Tech can no longer hide behind the legal shields it has relied on for nearly three decades. This is the story of what happened, why it matters far beyond the headline numbers, and what comes next for the s...
Canadian and U.S researches at the university of Toronto monitoring the hacking of a shadow spy network over the period of eight months have tracked it to servers based in China and specifically individuals based in Chengdu in central China
The report titled "Shadow in the Clouds" had launched an attack on Indian computers which transfered their control to Chinese control centers. Sensitive information from the Indian National Security and about 1.500 email from the Dalia Lama have already been stolen.
"I do not know what evidence these people have or what their motives are," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu. "We resolutely oppose all forms of cyber crime, including hacking."
The authors of the report, entitled "Shadows in the Cloud" and involving the Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation groups, said they weren't surprised by
The report describes a world in which governments are racing to militarize cyberspace, creating an environment ripe for crime and espionage.
Among the compromised systems subject to a massive data breach is the Shakti, the Indian Army's artillery combat and control system, as well as India
The eight-month investigation -- which researchers said is ongoing -- found that the Dalai Lama's office was targeted in the attacks between January and November 2009.
The malware used to compromise victims typically involved an element of social engineering, to convince recipients to open infected files. The attackers used PDF, PPT, and DOC files to exploit old and recent vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Word 2003 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2003.
The report concludes by warning that the selling points of cloud computing -- reliability, distribution, and redundancy -- are the very properties that make cloud services attractive to cybercriminals.
"Clouds provide criminals and espionage networks with convenient cover, tiered defenses, redundancy, cheap hosting and conveniently distributed command and control architectures," the report says. "They also provide a stealthy and very powerful mode of infiltrating targets who have become accustomed to clicking on links and opening PDFs and other documents as naturally as opening an office door. What is required now is a much greater refection on what it will take, in terms of personal computing, corporate responsibility and government policy, to acculturate a greater sensibility around cloud security."
Comments
Post a Comment