An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The trailer for "Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food" promised a sunny if melodramatic story of uplift in a south Indian temple town. A priest's daughter enters a cooking tournament, but social obstacles complicate her inevitable rise to the top. Annapoorani's father, a Brahmin sitting at the top of Hindu society's caste ladder, doesn't want her to cook meat, a taboo in their lineage. There is even the hint of a Hindu-Muslim romantic subplot. On Thursday, two weeks after the movie premiered, Netflix abruptly pulled it from its platform. An activist, Ramesh Solanki, a self-described "very proud Hindu Indian nationalist," had filed a police complaint arguing that the film was "intentionally released to hurt Hindu sentiments." He said it mocked Hinduism by "depicting our gods consuming nonvegetarian food."

The production studio quickly responded with an abject letter to a right-wing group linked to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, apologizing for having "hurt the religious sentiments of the Hindus and Brahmins community." The movie was soon removed from Netflix both in India and around the world, demonstrating the newfound power of Hindu nationalists to affect how Indian society is depicted on the screen. Nilesh Krishnaa, the movie's writer and director, tried to anticipate the possibility of offending some of his fellow Indians. Food, Brahminical customs and especially Hindu-Muslim relations are all part of a third rail that has grown more powerfully electrified during Mr. Modi's decade in power. But, Mr. Krishnaa told an Indian newspaper in November, "if there was something disturbing communal harmony in the film, the censor board would not have allowed it."

With "Annapoorani," Netflix appears to have in effect done the censoring itself even when the censor board did not. In other cases, Netflix now seems to be working with the board unofficially, though streaming services in India do not fall under the regulations that govern traditional Indian cinema. For years, Netflix ran unredacted versions of Indian films that had sensitive parts removed for their theatrical releases -- including political messages that contradicted the government's line. Since last year, though, the streaming versions of movies from India match the versions that were censored locally, no matter where in the world they are viewed. [...] Nikhil Pahwa, a co-founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, thinks the streaming companies are ready to capitulate: "They're unlikely to push back against any kind of bullying or censorship, even though there is no law in India" to force them.

Security researchers warned Apple as early as 2019 about vulnerabilities in its AirDrop wireless sharing function that Chinese authorities claim they recently used to track down users of the feature, the researchers told CNN, in a case that experts say has sweeping implications for global privacy. From a report: The Chinese government's actions targeting a tool that Apple customers around the world use to share photos and documents -- and Apple's apparent inaction to address the flaws -- revive longstanding concerns by US lawmakers and privacy advocates about Apple's relationship with China and about authoritarian regimes' ability to twist US tech products to their own ends.

AirDrop lets Apple users who are near each other share files using a proprietary mix of Bluetooth and other wireless connectivity without having to connect to the internet. The sharing feature has been used by pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and the Chinese government has cracked down on the feature in response. A Chinese tech firm, Beijing-based Wangshendongjian Technology, was able to compromise AirDrop to identify users on the Beijing subway accused of sharing "inappropriate information," judicial authorities in Beijing said this week. Although Chinese officials portrayed the exploit as an effective law enforcement technique, internet freedom advocates are urging Apple to address the issue quickly and publicly.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Joe Biden's administration has unveiled $623 million in funding to boost the number of electric vehicle charging points in the U.S., amid concerns that the transition to zero-carbon transportation isn't keeping pace with goals to tackle the climate crisis. The funding will be distributed in grants for dozens of programs across 22 states, such as EV chargers for apartment blocks in New Jersey, rapid chargers in Oregon and hydrogen fuel chargers for freight trucks in Texas. In all, it's expected the money, drawn from the bipartisan infrastructure law, will add 7,500 chargers to the US total.

There are about 170,000 electric vehicle chargers in the U.S., a huge leap from a network that was barely visible prior to Biden taking office, and the White House has set a goal for 500,000 chargers to help support the shift away from gasoline and diesel cars. "The U.S. is taking the lead globally on electric vehicles," said Ali Zaidi, a climate adviser to Biden who said the US is on a trajectory to "meet and exceed" the administration's charger goal. "We will continue to see this buildout over the coming years and decades until we've achieved a fully net zero transportation sector," he added. On Thursday, the House approved legislation to undo a Biden administration rule meant to facilitate the proliferation of EV charging stations. "S. J. Res. 38 from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), would scrap a Federal Highway Administration waiver from domestic sourcing requirements for EV chargers funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. It already passed the Senate 50-48," reports Politico.

"A waiver undercuts domestic investments and risks empowering foreign nations," said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, during House debate Thursday. "If the administration is going to continue to push for a massive transition to EVs, it should ensure and comply with Buy America requirements." The White House promised to veto it and said it would backfire, saying it was so poorly worded it would actually result in fewer new American-made charging stations.

E-commerce giant eBay agreed to pay a $3 million penalty for the harassment and stalking of a Massachusetts couple by several of its employees. "The couple, Ina and David Steiner, had been subjected to threats and bizarre deliveries, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask in August 2019," reports CBS News. From the report: Thursday's fine comes after several eBay employees ran a harassment and intimidation campaign against the Steiners, who publish a news website focusing on players in the e-commerce industry. "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. The company's employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand," Levy said. "We left no stone unturned in our mission to hold accountable every individual who turned the victims' world upside-down through a never-ending nightmare of menacing and criminal acts."

The Justice Department criminally charged eBay with two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstruction of justice. The company agreed to pay $3 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. Under the agreement, eBay will be required to retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for three years, officials said, to "ensure that eBay's senior leadership sets a tone that makes compliance with the law paramount, implements safeguards to prevent future criminal activity, and makes clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations will not be tolerated," Levy said.

Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said the plan to target the Steiners, which he described as a "campaign of terror," was hatched in April 2019 at eBay. Devin Wenig, eBay's CEO at the time, shared a link to a post Ina Steiner had written about his annual pay. The company's chief communications officer, Steve Wymer, responded: "We are going to crush this lady." About a month later, Wenig texted: "Take her down." Prosecutors said Wymer later texted eBay security director Jim Baugh. "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes," Wymer wrote. Investigators said Baugh set up a meeting with security staff and dispatched a team to Boston, about 20 miles from where the Steiners live. "Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content, and with the comments posted beneath the newsletter's articles," the Department of Justice wrote in its Thursday announcement. Two former eBay security executives were sentenced to prison over the incident.

Google formally endorsed the concept of right to repair Thursday and is set to testify in favor of a strong right to repair bill in Oregon later Thursday, a massive step forward for the right to repair movement. 404 Media: "Google believes that users should have more control over repair -- including access to the same documentation, parts and tools that original equipment manufacturer (OEM) repair channels have -- which is often referred to as 'Right to Repair,'" Google's Steven Nickel wrote in a white paper published Thursday.

Crucially, Google specifically says that regulators should ban "parts pairing," which is a tactic used by Apple, John Deere, and other major manufacturers to artificially restrict which repair parts can be used with a given device: "Policies should constrain OEMs from imposing unfair anti-repair practices. For example, parts-pairing, the practice of using software barriers to obstruct consumers and independent repair shops from replacing components, or other restrictive impediments to repair should be discouraged," the white paper says.

Stephen Harrison, an Englishman living in Thailand who posed as chief executive Steven Reece Lewis for the launch of the HyperVerse crypto scheme, told the Guardian Australia that he was paid to play the role of chief executive but denies having 'pocketed' any of the money lost. He says he received 180,000 Thai baht (about $7,500) over nine months and a free suit, adding that he was "shocked" to learn the company had presented him as having fake credentials to promote the scheme. From the report: He said he felt sorry for those who had lost money in relation to the scheme -- which he said he had no role in -- an amount Chainalysis estimates at US$1.3 billion in 2022 alone. "I am sorry for these people," he said. "Because they believed some idea with me at the forefront and believed in what I said, and God knows what these people have lost. And I do feel bad about this. "I do feel deeply sorry for these people, I really do. You know, it's horrible for them. I just hope that there is some resolution. I know it's hard to get the money back off these people or whatever, but I just hope there can be some justice served in all of this where they can get to the bottom of this." He said he wanted to make clear he had "certainly not pocketed" any of the money lost by investors.

Harrison, who at the time was a freelance television presenter engaged in unpaid football commentary, said he had been approached and offered the HyperVerse work by a friend of a friend. He said he was new to the industry and had been open to picking up more work and experience as a corporate "presenter." "I was told I was acting out a role to represent the business and many people do this," Harrison said. He said he trusted his agent and accepted that. After reading through the scripts he said he was initially suspicious about the company he was hired to represent because he was unfamiliar with the crypto industry, but said he had been reassured by his agent that the company was legitimate. He said he had also done some of his own online research into the organization and found articles about the Australian blockchain entrepreneur and HyperTech chairman Sam Lee. "I went away and I actually looked at the company because I was concerned that it could be a scam," Harrison said. "So I looked online a bit and everything seemed OK, so I rolled with it." The HyperVerse crypto scheme was promoted by Lee and his business partner Ryan Xu, both of which were founders of the collapsed Australian bitcoin company Blockchain Global. "Blockchain Global owes creditors $58 million and its liquidator has referred Xu and Lee to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for alleged possible breaches of the Corporations Act," reports The Guardian. "Asic has said it does not intend to take action at this time."

Rodney Burton, known as "Bitcoin Rodney," was arrested and charged in the U.S on Monday for his alleged role in promoting the HyperVerse crypto scheme. The IRS alleges Burton was "part of a network that made 'fraudulent' presentations claiming high returns for investors based on crypto-mining operations that did not exist," reports The Guardian.

Karl Bode, reporting for TechDirt: Back in 2019 we noted how the streaming sector risked driving consumers back to piracy if they didn't heed the lessons of the past. We explored how the rush to raise rates, nickel-and-dime users, implement arbitrary restrictions, and force users toward hunting and pecking their way through a confusing platter of exclusives and availability windows risked driving befuddled users back to piracy. And lo and behold, that's exactly what's happening.

After several decades of kicking and screaming, studio and music execs somewhere around 2010 finally realized they needed to offer users affordable access to easy-to-use online content resources. They finally realized they needed to compete with piracy and focus on consumer satisfaction whether they liked the concept or not. And unsurprisingly, once they learned that lesson piracy began to dramatically decrease. That was until 2021, when piracy rates began to climb slowly upward again in the U.S. and EU. As the Daily Beast notes, users have grown increasingly frustrated at having to hunt and peck through a universe of different, often terrible streaming services just to find a single film or television program.

As every last broadcaster, cable company, broadband provider, and tech company got into streaming they began to lock down "must watch" content behind an ever-shifting number of exclusivity silos, across an ocean of sometimes substandard "me too" services. Initially competition worked, but as the market saturated and the most powerful companies started to silo content, those benefits have been muted. Now users have to hunt and peck between Disney+, Netflix, Starz, Max, Apple+, Acorn, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon Prime, and countless other services in the hopes that a service has the rights to a particular film or program. When you already pay for five different services, you're not keen to sign up to fucking Starz just to watch a single 90s film. And availability is constantly shifting, confusing things further.

According to Bloomberg, Apple's AirDrop feature has been cracked by a Chinese state-backed institution to identify senders who share "undesirable content". MacRumors reports: AirDrop is Apple's ad-hoc service that lets users discover nearby Macs and iOS devices and securely transfer files between them over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Users can send and receive photos, videos, documents, contacts, passwords and anything else that can be transferred from a Share Sheet. Apple advertises the protocol as secure because the wireless connection uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, but the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice (BMBJ) says it has devised a way to bypass the protocol's encryption and reveal identifying information.

According to the BMBJ's website, iPhone device logs were analyzed to create a "rainbow table" which allowed investigators to convert hidden hash values into the original text and correlate the phone numbers and email accounts of AirDrop content senders. The "technological breakthrough" has successfully helped the public security authorities identify a number of criminal suspects, who use the AirDrop function to spread illegal content, the BMBJ added. "It improves the efficiency and accuracy of case-solving and prevents the spread of inappropriate remarks as well as potential bad influences," the bureau added.

It is not known if the security flaw in the AirDrop protocol has been exploited by a government agency before now, but it is not the first time a flaw has been discovered. In April 2021, German researchers found that the mutual authentication mechanism that confirms both the receiver and sender are on each other's address book could be used to expose private information. According to the researchers, Apple was informed of the flaw in May of 2019, but did not fix it.

With the approval of new rule change applications, the SEC is now allowing bitcoin ETFs to be traded in the United States.



UPDATE: The SEC said that the announcement about bitcoin ETFs on social media was incorrect, and that its X account was compromised. "The SEC's @SECGov X/Twitter account has been compromised. The unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs was not made by the SEC or its staff," an SEC spokesperson told CNBC.

"The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a post on X. From the original CNBC article: The decision will likely lead to the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which holds about $29 billion of the cryptocurrency, into an ETF, as well as the launch of competing funds from mainstream issuers like BlackRock's iShares. The approval could prove to be a landmark event in the adoption of cryptocurrency by mainstream finance, as the ETF structure gives institutions and financial advisors a familiar and regulated way to buy exposure to bitcoin.

The SEC has for years opposed a so-called spot bitcoin fund, with several firms filing and then withdrawing applications for ETFs in the past. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been an outspoken critic of crypto during his tenure. However, the regulator appeared to change course on the ETF question in 2023, possibly due in part to an August loss to Grayscale in court which criticized the SEC for blocking bitcoin ETFs while allowing funds that track bitcoin futures.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has banned the data broker X-Mode Social from sharing or selling users' sensitive location data, the federal regulator said Tuesday. From a report: The first of its kind settlement prohibits X-Mode, now known as Outlogic, from sharing and selling users' sensitive information to others. The settlement will also require the data broker to delete or destroy all the location data it previously collected, along with any products produced from this data, unless the company obtains consumer consent or ensures the data has been de-identified. X-Mode buys and sells access to the location data collected from ordinary phone apps. While just one of many organizations in the multibillion-dollar data broker industry, X-Mode faced scrutiny for selling access to the commercial location data of Americans' past movements to the U.S. government and military contractors. Soon after, Apple and Google told developers to remove X-Mode from their apps or face a ban from the app stores.

Press2ToContinue writes: England's 1,000-year-old legal system -- still steeped in traditions that include wearing wigs and robes -- has taken a cautious step into the future by giving judges permission to use artificial intelligence to help produce rulings . The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary last month said AI could help write opinions but stressed it shouldn't be used for research or legal analyses because the technology can fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information.

"Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI," said Master of the Rolls Geoffrey Vos, the second-highest ranking judge in England and Wales. "But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce." At a time when scholars and legal experts are pondering a future when AI could replace lawyers, help select jurors or even decide cases, the approach spelled out Dec. 11 by the judiciary is restrained. But for a profession slow to embrace technological change, it's a proactive step as government and industry -- and society in general -- react to a rapidly advancing technology alternately portrayed as a panacea and a menace.

Alphabet's Google is set to go before a federal jury in Boston on Tuesday in a trial over accusations that processors it uses to power AI technology in key products infringe a computer scientist's patents. From a report: Singular Computing, founded by Massachusetts-based computer scientist Joseph Bates, claims Google copied his technology and used it to support AI features in Google Search, Gmail, Google Translate and other Google services. A Google court filing said that Singular has requested up to $7 billion in monetary damages, which would be more than double the largest-ever patent infringement award in U.S. history.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda called Singular's patents "dubious" and said that Google developed its processors "independently over many years." "We look forward to setting the record straight in court," Castaneda said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden will release a final rule as soon as this week that will make it more difficult for companies to treat workers as independent contractors rather than employees that typically cost a company more, an administration official said. The U.S. Department of Labor rule, which was first proposed in 2022 and is likely to face legal challenges, will require that workers be considered employees entitled to more benefits and legal protections than contractors when they are "economically dependent" on a company.

A range of industries will likely be affected by the rule, which will take effect later this year, but its potential impact on app-based services that rely heavily on contract workers has garnered the most attention. Shares of Uber, Lyft and DoorDash all tumbled at least 10% when the draft rule was proposed in October 2022. The rule is among regulations with the most far-reaching impacts issued by the Labor Department office that enforces U.S. wage laws, according to Marc Freedman, vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest U.S. business lobby. But he said the draft version of the rule provides little guidance to companies on where to draw the line between employees and contractors. "Economic dependence is an elusive concept that in some cases may end up being defined by the eyes of the beholder," Freedman said.

The Labor Department in the proposed rule said it would consider factors such as a worker's "opportunity for profit or loss, investment, permanency, the degree of control by the employer over the worker, (and) whether the work is an integral part of the employer's business." The rule replaces a Trump administration regulation that said workers who own their own businesses or have the ability to work for competing companies, such as a driver who works for Uber and Lyft, can be treated as contractors. [...] The Biden administration has said the Trump-era rule violated U.S. wage laws and was out of step with decades of federal court decisions, and worker advocates have said a more strict standard was necessary to combat the rampant misclassification of workers in some industries.

"The famed and mysterious disappearance of D.B. Cooper has puzzled investigators for over half a century," writes a Seattle TV station. Now new evidence is coming to light in the supposed "skyjacking," after a microscopic piece of metal found on D. B. Cooper's tie could help reveal his true identity. "Considering the totality of all that has been uncovered in the last year with respect to DB Cooper's tie, I can say with a very high degree of certainty that DB Cooper worked for Crucible Steel," said independent investigator Eric Ulis.
"I would not be surprised at all if 2024 was the year we figure out who this guy was," Ulis told another local Seattle news station: This particle is part stainless steel, part titanium... 18 months ago, Ulis used U.S. patents to trace three of these fragments from the same very tie to a specific plant in Pennsylvania, Crucible Steel. "Headquartered in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, a significant subcontractor all throughout the 1960s," said Ulis. "It supplied the lion's share of titanium and stainless steel for Boeing's aircraft...."

Ulis claims evidence points to Cooper having in-depth knowledge of the 727 he hijacked, and of the Seattle area. Workers at Crucible Steel were known to travel and visit their contractor, Boeing. "This is also the time, 1971, when Boeing had this significant downturn, the big depression, with 'The last person leaving Seattle, please turn out the lights' [billboard sign]," said Ulis. "It's reasonable to deduce that D. B. Cooper may well have been part of that downturn."

Ulis admits his findings are not yet concrete. He's not crossing any suspects off the list. However, he believes from what he's seen, all roads lead to titanium research engineer Vince Peterson from Pittsburgh.
It all reminds me of that episode of Prison Break where they suspect one of the prisoners is secretly D.B. Cooper...

Today America's Federal Aviation Administration "ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft," reports CNN, identifying the aircraft as "the model involved in an Alaska Airlines emergency landing in Oregon on Friday after a section of the plane apparently blew out in midflight." A passenger's video posted to social media shows a side section of the fuselage, where a window would have been, missing — exposing passengers to the outside air. The video, which appears to have been taken from several rows behind the incident, shows oxygen masks deployed throughout the airplane, and least two people sitting near and just behind the missing section...

The plane "landed safely back at Portland International Airport with 171 guests and six crew members," the airline said... According to FlightAware, the flight was airborne for about 20 minutes.
"There was a really loud bang toward the rear of the plane and a whoosh noise," one passenger told a local news station — and then "all of the masks dropped."

Long-time Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares more details from the BBC: Diego Murillo said the gap was "as wide as a refrigerator".

Fellow passenger Elizabeth Lee added: "Part of the plane was missing and the wind was just extremely loud. but everyone was in their seats and had their belt on."

Jessica Montoia described the flight as a "trip from hell" adding a phone was taken out of a man's hand by the wind.
CNN covers the federal response: The FAA said the planes must be parked until emergency inspections are performed, which will "take around four to eight hours per aircraft."

"The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight," FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said Saturday in a statement. "Safety will continue to drive our decision-making as we assist the (National Transportation Safety Board's) investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282." The order impacts 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 jets, the agency approximates....

Boeing said the company supported the FAA's grounding decision. "Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers," Boeing said in a statement
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader lsllll for sharing the news.

CNN reports that some Verizon customers "might have found an unexpected surprise in the mail this week: An opportunity to receive a refund as part of a proposed $100 million settlement from a class-action lawsuit." Eligible customers are receiving postcards or emails alerting them to file a claim by April 15 to receive up to $100, which is the result of the lawsuit accusing Verizon of charging fees that were "unfair and not adequately disclosed."

At issue is Verizon's "administrative charge," which the plaintiffs said were "misleading" because that fee wasn't disclosed in their plan's advertised monthly price and were charged in a "deceptive and unfair manner." Verizon has denied the claims and said in a statement that it "clearly identifies and describes its wireless consumer admin charge multiple times during the sales transaction, as well as in its marketing, contracts and billing." A company spokesperson said that the charge "helps our company recover certain regulatory compliance and network related costs."
"The payout is at least $15," adds CNN, "and might be more depending on how long the customer used Verizon and the number of customers who file a claim."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Russian hackers were inside Ukrainian telecoms giant Kyivstar's system from at least May last year in a cyberattack that should serve as a "big warning" to the West, Ukraine's cyber spy chief told Reuters. The hack, one of the most dramatic since Russia's full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, knocked out services provided by Ukraine's biggest telecoms operator for some 24 million users for days from Dec. 12. In an interview, Illia Vitiuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) cybersecurity department, disclosed exclusive details about the hack, which he said caused "disastrous" destruction and aimed to land a psychological blow and gather intelligence. "This attack is a big message, a big warning, not only to Ukraine, but for the whole Western world to understand that no one is actually untouchable," he said. He noted Kyivstar was a wealthy, private company that invested a lot in cybersecurity.

The attack wiped "almost everything", including thousands of virtual servers and PCs, he said, describing it as probably the first example of a destructive cyberattack that "completely destroyed the core of a telecoms operator." During its investigation, the SBU found the hackers probably attempted to penetrate Kyivstar in March or earlier, he said in a Zoom interview on Dec. 27. "For now, we can say securely, that they were in the system at least since May 2023," he said. "I cannot say right now, since what time they had ... full access: probably at least since November." The SBU assessed the hackers would have been able to steal personal information, understand the locations of phones, intercept SMS-messages and perhaps steal Telegram accounts with the level of access they gained, he said. A Kyivstar spokesperson said the company was working closely with the SBU to investigate the attack and would take all necessary steps to eliminate future risks, adding: "No facts of leakage of personal and subscriber data have been revealed."

Investigating the attack is harder because of the wiping of Kyivstar's infrastructure. Vitiuk said he was "pretty sure" it was carried out by Sandworm, a Russian military intelligence cyberwarfare unit that has been linked to cyberattacks in Ukraine and elsewhere. A year ago, Sandworm penetrated a Ukrainian telecoms operator, but was detected by Kyiv because the SBU had itself been inside Russian systems, Vitiuk said, declining to identify the company. The earlier hack has not been previously reported. Vitiuk said SBU investigators were still working to establish how Kyivstar was penetrated or what type of trojan horse malware could have been used to break in, adding that it could have been phishing, someone helping on the inside or something else. If it was an inside job, the insider who helped the hackers did not have a high level of clearance in the company, as the hackers made use of malware used to steal hashes of passwords, he said. Samples of that malware have been recovered and are being analysed, he added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Justice Department is in the late stages of an investigation into Apple and could file a sweeping antitrust case taking aim at the company's strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone as soon as the first half of this year, said three people with knowledge of the matter. The agency is focused on how Apple has used its control over its hardware and software to make it more difficult for consumers to ditch the company's devices, as well as for rivals to compete, said the people, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was active. Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They have also scrutinized Apple's payments system for the iPhone, which blocks other financial firms from offering similar services, these people said.

The Justice Department is closing in on what would be the most consequential federal antitrust lawsuit challenging Apple, which is the most valuable tech company in the world. If the lawsuit is filed, American regulators will have sued four of the biggest tech companies for monopolistic business practices in less than five years. The Justice Department is currently facing off against Google in two antitrust cases, focused on its search and ad tech businesses, while the Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon and Meta for stifling competition. The Apple suit would likely be even more expansive than previous challenges to the company, attacking its powerful business model that draws together the iPhone with devices like the Apple Watch and services like Apple Pay to attract and keep consumers loyal to its products. Rivals have said that they have been denied access to key Apple features, like the Siri virtual assistant, prompting them to argue the practices are anticompetitive.

Google is collecting the eyelid shape and skin tone of children via parent submitted videos, according to a project description online reviewed by 404 Media. From the report: Canadian tech conglomerate TELUS, which says it is working on Google's behalf, is offering parents $50 to film their children wearing various props such as hats or sunglasses as part of the project, the description adds. The project shows the methods some companies are using to build machine learning, artificial intelligence, or facial recognition datasets and products. Rather than scraping already existing images or analyzing previously collected material, TELUS, and by extension Google, is asking the public to contribute directly and get paid in return. Google told 404 Media the collection was part of the company's efforts to verify users' age.

A cartel in the embattled central Mexico state of Michoacan set up its own makeshift internet antennas and told locals they had to pay to use its wifi service or they would be killed, according to prosecutors. New submitter awwshit shares a story: Dubbed "narco-antennas" by local media, the cartel's system involved internet antennas set up in various towns built with stolen equipment. The group charged approximately 5,000 people elevated prices between 400 and 500 pesos ($25 and $30) a month, the Michoacan state prosecutor's office told the Associated Press. That meant the group could rake in about $150,000 a month. People were terrorized "to contract the internet services at excessive costs, under the claim that they would be killed if they did not," prosecutors said, though they did not report any such deaths. Local media identified the criminal group as a faction known as Los Viagras. Prosecutors declined to say which cartel was involved because the case was still under investigation, but they confirmed Los Viagras dominates the towns forced to make the wifi payments.