serisec

Category: courts

  • New Mexico’s Meta Ruling and Encryption

    New Mexico’s Meta Ruling and Encryption Mike Masnick points out that the recent New Mexico court ruling against Meta has some bad implications for end-to-end encryption, and security in general: If the “design choices create liability” framework seems worrying in the abstract, the New Mexico case provides a concrete example of where it leads in…

  • iPhone Lockdown Mode Protects Washington Post Reporter

    iPhone Lockdown Mode Protects Washington Post Reporter 404Media is reporting that the FBI could not access a reporter’s iPhone because it had Lockdown Mode enabled: The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson,…

  • The Constitutionality of Geofence Warrants

    The Constitutionality of Geofence Warrants The US Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of geofence warrants. The case centers on the trial of Okello Chatrie, a Virginia man who pleaded guilty to a 2019 robbery outside of Richmond and was sentenced to almost 12 years in prison for stealing $195,000 at gunpoint. Police probing the…

  • Legal Restrictions on Vulnerability Disclosure

    Legal Restrictions on Vulnerability Disclosure Kendra Albert gave an excellent talk at USENIX Security this year, pointing out that the legal agreements surrounding vulnerability disclosure muzzle researchers while allowing companies to not fix the vulnerabilities—exactly the opposite of what the responsible disclosure movement of the early 2000s was supposed to prevent. This is the talk.…

  • Flok License Plate Surveillance

    Flok License Plate Surveillance The company Flok is surveilling us as we drive: A retired veteran named Lee Schmidt wanted to know how often Norfolk, Virginia’s 176 Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader cameras were tracking him. The answer, according to a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed in September, was more than four times a day, or…

  • First Sentencing in Scheme to Help North Koreans Infiltrate US Companies

    First Sentencing in Scheme to Help North Koreans Infiltrate US Companies An Arizona woman was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for her role helping North Korean workers infiltrate US companies by pretending to be US workers. From an article: According to court documents, Chapman hosted the North Korean IT workers’ computers in her own…

  • Google Sues the Badbox Botnet Operators

    Google Sues the Badbox Botnet Operators It will be interesting to watch what will come of this private lawsuit: Google on Thursday announced filing a lawsuit against the operators of the Badbox 2.0 botnet, which has ensnared more than 10 million devices running Android open source software. These devices lack Google’s security protections, and the…

  • Ghostwriting Scam

    Ghostwriting Scam The variations seem to be endless. Here’s a fake ghostwriting scam that seems to be making boatloads of money. This is a big story about scams being run from Texas and Pakistan estimated to run into tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, viciously defrauding Americans with false hopes of publishing bestseller…

  • DoorDash Hack

    DoorDash Hack A DoorDash driver stole over $2.5 million over several months: The driver, Sayee Chaitainya Reddy Devagiri, placed expensive orders from a fraudulent customer account in the DoorDash app. Then, using DoorDash employee credentials, he manually assigned the orders to driver accounts he and the others involved had created. Devagiri would then mark the…

  • Court Rules Against NSO Group

    Court Rules Against NSO Group The case is over: A jury has awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages in a case the company brought against Israel-based NSO Group for exploiting a software vulnerability that hijacked the phones of thousands of users. I’m sure it’ll be appealed. Everything always is. Bruce Schneier Go to bruce…

  • WhatsApp Case Against NSO Group Progressing

    WhatsApp Case Against NSO Group Progressing Meta is suing NSO Group, basically claiming that the latter hacks WhatsApp and not just WhatsApp users. We have a procedural ruling: Under the order, NSO Group is prohibited from presenting evidence about its customers’ identities, implying the targeted WhatsApp users are suspected or actual criminals, or alleging that…

  • Windscribe Acquitted on Charges of Not Collecting Users’ Data

    Windscribe Acquitted on Charges of Not Collecting Users’ Data The company doesn’t keep logs, so couldn’t turn over data: Windscribe, a globally used privacy-first VPN service, announced today that its founder, Yegor Sak, has been fully acquitted by a court in Athens, Greece, following a two-year legal battle in which Sak was personally charged in…

  • Criminal Complaint against LockBit Ransomware Writer

    Criminal Complaint against LockBit Ransomware Writer The Justice Department has published the criminal complaint against Dmitry Khoroshev, for building and maintaining the LockBit ransomware. Bruce Schneier Go to bruce schneier