Not every form of malware is a conspiracy involving a state-sponsored actor. That’s the main takeaway following the arrest of an Ohio man alleged to be behind the Fruitfly macOS malware. Phillip R. Durachinsky, 28, of North Royalton, Ohio was indicted Wednesday by the Department of Justice on 16 charges covering Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ...

New legislation being pushed by two Senate Democrats would give the Federal Trade Commission the power to fine credit reporting agencies that fail to protect consumer information from data breaches. The proposed law, called the Data Breach Prevention and Compensation Act 2018, was proposed today by Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) in response to the ...

Thanks to a continued flush of huge funding rounds, venture capital flowing into U.S.-based companies rose 17 percent last year, to $71.9 billion. The numbers, released early Wednesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and CB Insights’ in their quarterly MoneyTree Report, found that overall venture capital had a strong year in the U.S. Megarounds, meaning those of more than ...

Attempts to bring bitcoin exchange-traded funds to market have taken a blow as several companies withdrew their applications following feedback from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Companies that have withdrawn their applications include Direxion Shares ETF Trust, Exchange Listed Funds Trust and ProShares Trust, with all three citing discussions with the SEC as spurring their decisions. “On ...

Connecting to public Wi-Fi networks has always come with a certain level of risk, but in a new twist, the next time you connect at your local cafe, it could be hijacked to mine for cryptocurrencies. Initially published as a proof of concept but possibly now being used in the wild, the “CoffeeMiner” exploit uses public Wi-Fi ...

Shares in Eastman Kodak surged by nearly 200 percent Tuesday after the venerable company announced it was jumping on the blockchain bandwagon with an initial coin offering and blockchain-based platform for managing digital rights for photographers. Kodak, for those without long memories or who count themselves as millennials, was once the world’s largest camera maker ...

Microsoft Corp.’s usually mundane monthly “Patch Tuesday” release took a different twist this month following a mad scramble to issue fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities disclosed last week, some of which have since been found to have problems. The monthly patch cycle started early with system updates attempting to patch the vulnerabilities in processors ...

China is reported to be moving to ban bitcoin mining again, maybe. A questionable report surfaced Monday that claims a previously unknown regulator in China is asking other government authorities to push bitcoin miners out of business. The claim comes from Quartz, which reported that the directive comes from the “Leading Group of Internet Financial Risks Remediation.” The alleged directive ...

Children’s toy maker VTech Holdings Ltd. has agreed to pay $650,000 to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission related to the hacking and subsequent theft of data on its customers in 2015. The FTC alleged in its complaint that VTech, through its Kid Connect app that collected personal information from hundreds of ...

Amazon.com Inc. has opened a new front in its efforts to dominate the smart home assistant market: It has signed new deals with a range of manufacturers that will see Alexa preinstalled on Windows 10-powered personal computers. Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Monday, the deals see Amazon team up with HP Inc., ...