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  • Australian Judge Extends Ban on X Sharing Video of Sydney Bishop’s Stabbing

    Australian Judge Extends Ban on X Sharing Video of Sydney Bishop’s Stabbing

    MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian judge on Friday extended a ban on X allowing videos of the stabbing of a Sydney bishop in his church last month after government lawyers condemned the social media company’s free speech argument for keeping the graphic images circulating.

    Australian Federal Court Justice Geoffrey Kennett extended his order that X Corp., the company rebranded by billionaire Elon Musk when he bought Twitter last year, block users from sharing videos of the April 15 attack.

    The attack led to terrorism-related charges for the alleged attacker, a teenager, and triggered a riot outside the church.

    The order has existed since April 22 and Kennett will decide on Monday whether it will continue in its current form.

    X is alone among social media platforms in fighting a notice from Australia’s eSafety Commission, which describes itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer online, to take down the video of the attack during an Assyrian Orthodox service streamed online.

    A bishop and priest were injured but both survived.

    Musk has accused Australia of censorship and has applied to the Federal Court to overturn the eSafety notice. The court will sit on Wednesday to consider setting a hearing date for X’s application.

    X has geoblocked Australian users from the content, but eSafety argues the video can be still accessed from Australia through Virtual Private Networks.

    VPNs are services that allow users to access sites in other countries that are blocked in their own nation. The regulator wants a worldwide ban on the video.

    An eSafety lawyer, Tim Begbie, described X in court on Friday as a “market leader in proliferating and distributing violent content and violent and extremist material.”

    Begbie said Australia could not be expected to conform to X’s “pro-free speech stance.”

    “The fact is that that stance is in large measure illusory. Because X doesn’t stand for ‘global removal is bad’ in some pure sense,” Begbie said.

    X’s own policies repeatedly refer to circumstances in which the platform will elect to remove content globally, Begbie said.

    “The real position is this: X says that ‘reasonable’ means what X wants it to mean,” Begbie said.

    “Global removal is reasonable when X does it because X wants to do it. But it becomes unreasonable when X is told to do it by the laws of Australia,” Begbie added.

    X lawyer Bret Walker said X had taken reasonable steps to block the content from Australia but said there had been glitches.

    He described eSafety’s demand for a global ban as astonishing and the notice as invalid.

    “You don’t expect to see statutes saying the Australian Parliament will regulate what concerning Australia — that is events in Australia — can be viewed in Russia, Finland, Belgium or the United States,” Walker said.

    “Not unless we want to become isolationist to a degree that is unthinkable,” Walker added.

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Russian Cyber Attacks Targeted Defence, Aerospace Sectors, Berlin Says

    Russian Cyber Attacks Targeted Defence, Aerospace Sectors, Berlin Says

    BERLIN (Reuters) – A series of cyber attacks attributable to the Russian military intelligence service GRU targeted Germany’s governing Social Democrats as well as the country’s logistics, defence, aerospace and IT sectors, the interior ministry said on Friday.

    APT 28 – the group that orchestrated the attacks in 2022 and reports to the GRU – exploited a then-unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook over a longer period of time in order to compromise email accounts, the ministry said.

    “The Russian cyber attacks are a threat to our democracy, which we are resolutely countering,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement, adding that Germany was acting alongside the EU and NATO. “Under no circumstances will we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the Russian regime.”

    Faeser added that it was particularly critical to counter such attacks from Russia ahead of the European and other elections this year.

    Earlier on Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned Russia that it would face consequences for the attacks, which saw a series of German websites knocked offline.

    APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, has been active worldwide since at least 2004, primarily in the field of cyber espionage. According to Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, it is one of the most active and dangerous cyber actors worldwide.

    Photos You Should See – April 2024

    (Reporting by Alasdair Pal and Andreas Rinke, Writing by Friederike Heine, Editing by Rachel More)

    Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.

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  • Finnish Hacker Gets Prison for Accessing Thousands of Psychotherapy Records and Demanding Ransoms

    Finnish Hacker Gets Prison for Accessing Thousands of Psychotherapy Records and Demanding Ransoms

    HELSINKI (AP) — A Finnish court on Tuesday sentenced a 26-year-old man to six years and three months in prison for hacking thousands of patient records at a private psychotherapy center and seeking ransom from some patients over the sensitive data.

    The case has caused outrage in the Nordic nation, with a record number of people — about 24,000 — filing criminal complaints with police.

    In February 2023, French police arrested well-known Finnish hacker Aleksanteri Kivimäki, who was living under a false identity near Paris. He was deported to Finland. His trial ended last month.

    The Länsi-Uusimaa District Court said Kivimäki was guilty of, among other things, aggravated data breach, nearly 21,000 aggravated blackmail attempts and more than 9,200 aggravated disseminations of information infringing private life.

    The court called the crimes “ruthless” and “very damaging” considering the state of people involved.

    According to the charges, Kivimäki in 2018 hacked into the information system of the Vastaamo psychotherapy center and downloaded its database of some 33,000 clients.

    Photos You Should See – April 2024

    Vastaamo, which declared bankruptcy in 2021, had branches throughout the country of 5.6 million people and operated as a sub-contractor for Finland’s public health system.

    Prosecutors said Kivimäki first demanded that Vastaamo pay him an amount equivalent to around 370,000 euros ($396,000) in bitcoins in exchange for not publishing the patient records.

    When the center refused, Kivimäki in 2020 began publishing patient information on the dark web and sent patients messages demanding a ransom of 200 euros or 500 euros. About 20 patients paid, prosecutors said.

    Kivimäki denied all charges. His lawyer said he would likely appeal. Prosecutors had sought seven years in prison, the maximum for such crimes under Finnish law.

    Kivimäki was first convicted at age 15 after hacking into over 50,000 servers with software he developed, Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat reported in 2022.

    In the United States, he was convicted over hacking cases involving the U.S. Air Force and Sony Online Entertainment.

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Cyberattacks Are on the Rise, and That Includes Small Businesses. Here’s What to Know

    Cyberattacks Are on the Rise, and That Includes Small Businesses. Here’s What to Know

    NEW YORK (AP) — Cyberattacks on businesses are rising, including small businesses. It’s a troubling trend because a breach can be very costly and time consuming if owners don’t have a plan to deal with one.

    According to the Verizon 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, the median cost per ransomware attack — which features a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid — more than doubled over the past two years to $26,000.

    That’s partly because there has been a dramatic increase in ransomware attacks, which represent 24% of all breaches.

    Small businesses should first have a plan in place to prevent cyberattacks. The human element is the cause of 74% of breaches, so owners should make sure all of their employees use safeguards such as two-factor identification to make it harder to be hacked. Requiring employees to regularly change their passwords can also help.

    If your business has been breached, it’s best to work with a cybersecurity executive within your company or a trusted third party to assess what happened and the damage done. Trying to contain it without having the right technical knowledge can just make things worse.

    It’s also important to let the authorities know what happened. Attacks must be reported to federal authorities within 72 hours after a company is reasonably sure one has occurred.

    Photos You Should See – April 2024

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • US Prosecutors Try to Send Warning to Cryptocurrency World With KuCoin Prosecution

    US Prosecutors Try to Send Warning to Cryptocurrency World With KuCoin Prosecution

    NEW YORK (AP) — A top U.S. prosecutor announced criminal charges Tuesday against a once-ascending company in the cryptocurrency world and two of its founders in a bid to send a message to other players in the industry to follow U.S. laws.

    U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said conspiracy charges against KuCoin and two executives should warn other crypto exchanges that they cannot serve U.S. customers without following U.S. laws. An indictment in Manhattan federal court said the company and its founders tried to conceal the existence of its U.S. customer base.

    In December, New York Attorney General Letitia James secured a payout of more than $22 million from KuCoin to refund $16.7 million to over 150,000 New York investors and provide New York state with over $5.3 million. KuCoin was also required to cease New York operations after falsely representing itself as a crypto exchange without registering as a securities and commodities broker-dealer, James said.

    Williams said in a release that KuCoin, formed in 2017, “took advantage of its sizeable U.S. customer base to become one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives and spot exchanges, with billions of dollars of daily trades and trillions of dollars of annual trade volume.”

    He said the company deliberately chose to flout U.S. laws designed to help identify and eliminate crime and corrupt financing schemes on financial platforms. As a result, authorities said, the company was used as a vehicle to launder large sums of proceeds from criminal malware, ransomware and fraud schemes.

    KuCoin failed to implement even basic anti-money laundering policies as it let customers process over $4 billion of suspicious and criminal funds as KuCoin operated in the shadows of the financial markets and provided a haven for illicit money laundering, Williams said.

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    Darren McCormack, who heads the New York office of Homeland Security Investigations, said the prosecution exposes one of the largest global cryptocurrency exchanges as a multibillion-dollar criminal conspiracy.

    “KuCoin grew to service over 30 million customers, despite its alleged failure to follow laws necessary to ensuring the security and stability of our world’s digital banking infrastructure,” McCormack said.

    In a statement posted on social media, the company said it was “operating well, and the assets of our users are absolutely safe.”

    It added: “We are aware of the related reports and are currently investigating the details through our lawyers. KuCoin respect the laws and regulations of various countries and strictly adheres to compliance standards.”

    Also on social media, the company’s chief executive, identifying himself as “Johnny,” said the “regulatory matter related to KuCoin has come to my attention. While we’re working on it, the platform is unaffected and operating normally as usual. Your assets are safe and sound with us. Our team and I will provide timely updates about the progress.”

    Charged along with the company were Chun Gan, 34, and Ke Tang, 39, two of the company’s founders and both citizens of China. Charged with conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, they remain at large.

    The Bank Secrecy Act charge stemmed from the failure of the men to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program to prevent KuCoin from being used for money laundering and terrorist financing, along with failing to verify customers and failing to file any suspicious activity reports common in the financial industry, prosecutors said.

    Three companies doing business as KuCoin were incorporated in the Cayman Islands, the Republic of Seychelles and Singapore. They were also facing conspiracy charges.

    On the KuCoin website Tuesday, U.S. residents were greeted with the following message: “Based on your IP address, we currently do not provide services in your country or region due to local laws, regulations, or policies. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you are from a region where our services are available, please access our platform from a supported location to complete KYC verification.”

    The company claims it has 30 million registered users across more than 200 countries and regions worldwide.

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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