Legal
Telegram hands over data on thousands of users to US law enforcement
Telegram reveals that the communications platform has fulfilled 900 U.S. government requests, sharing the phone number or IP address information of 2,253 users with law enforcement. This number is a steep increase from previous years, with most requests processed after the platform’s policy shift on sharing user data, announced in September 2024. While Telegram has long been […]
Washington state sues T-Mobile over 2021 data breach security failures
Washington state has sued T-Mobile over failing to secure the sensitive personal information of over 2 million Washington residents in a 2021 data breach. The case dates back to August 2021, when T-Mobile admitted that attackers brute forced their way into its corporate network and gained access to the sensitive information of 79 million people nationwide. The data breach itself, […]
Apple offers $95 million in Siri privacy violation settlement
Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit in the U.S. alleging that its Siri assistant recorded private conversations and shared them with third parties. The proposed lawsuit alleges that the audio data was disclosed without users’ consent to a network of third-party marketers and advertisers. Users complained of being targeted on their […]
FTC orders Marriott and Starwood to implement strict data security
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered Marriott International and Starwood Hotels to define and implement a robust customer data security scheme following failures that led to massive data breaches. After acquiring Starwood in 2016 and failing to implement “reasonable data security,” Marriott International suffered three major data breaches impacting 344 million customers globally. Order for stronger […]
Ireland fines Meta $264 million over 2018 Facebook data breach
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta €251 million ($263.6M) over General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) violations arising from a 2018 personal data breach impacting 29 million Facebook accounts. The breach was caused by the exploitation of user access tokens by unauthorized parties, exposing sensitive user data such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical locations, […]
Operation PowerOFF shuts down 27 DDoS-for-hire platforms
Law enforcement agencies from 15 countries have taken 27 DDoS-for-hire services offline, also known as “booters” or “stressers,” arrested three administrators, and identified 300 customers of the platforms. The action is part of ‘Operation PowerOFF,’ an international initiative to combat cybercrime, specifically distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS-for-hire services are platforms that utilize botnets on compromised […]
FTC distributes $72 million in Fortnite refunds from Epic Games
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is distributing over $72 million in Epic Game Fortnite refunds for the company’s use of dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases. This is part of the record-breaking $245 million settlement the agency reached with the game publisher in December 2022. The settlement addressed allegations that Epic Games used “dark […]
Korea arrests CEO for adding DDoS feature to satellite receivers
South Korean police have arrested a CEO and five employees for manufacturing over 240,000 satellite receivers pre-loaded or later updated to include DDoS attack functionality at a purchaser’s request. While neither company has been named, the two companies have been trading since 2017. In November 2018, the purchasing company made a special request to include […]
Bitfinex hacker gets 5 years in prison for 120,000 bitcoin heist
A hacker responsible for stealing 119,754 Bitcoin in a 2016 hack on the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange was sentenced to five years in prison by U.S. authorities. The man, Ilya Lichtenstein, was arrested in February 2022 in Manhattan following a lengthy investigation led by the IRS, HSI, and the FBI, which managed to recover roughly 80% of the […]
Hacker gets 10 years in prison for extorting US healthcare provider
Robert Purbeck, a 45-year-old man from Idaho, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for hacking at least 19 organizations in the United States, stealing the personal data of more than 132,000 people, and multiple extortion attempts. As showcased in the indictment, prosecutors linked multiple data theft and blackmail incidents to Purbeck (also known online […]