Bitpoint suspends services after apparent theft of virtual monies including bitcoin
A cryptocurrency exchange in Tokyo has halted services after it lost $32m (£25m) in the latest apparent hack on volatile virtual monies.
Remixpoint, which runs the Bitpoint Japan exchange, discovered that about ¥3.5bn in various digital currencies had gone missing from under its management.
Continue reading...Thom Yorke describes hours of recordings from OK Computer sessions as ‘not v interesting’, while climate activists thank the band for ‘unprecedented support’
Radiohead have released a vast collection of unreleased tracks made during the sessions for 1997 album OK Computer, after a MiniDisc archive owned by frontman Thom Yorke was hacked last week by an unnamed person, who reportedly held the recordings to ransom for $150,000.
The band have now made the 18 MiniDisc recordings, most of them around an hour in length, available on Bandcamp for £18. Proceeds will go to climate activists Extinction Rebellion.
Continue reading...Idan Ofer allegedly hired Black Cube in 2014 but firm denies meeting and is suing TV show
An Israeli investigative TV show has claimed that one of the country’s richest men hired the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube to dig up dirt on a cabinet minister. Black Cube denied the allegations.
Idan Ofer allegedly hired the firm in 2014 to investigate the then-finance minister Yair Lapid and other top officials, Uvda reported, as part of his efforts to influence tax policy on natural gas finds at the time.
Ofer, a billionaire with vast holdings in the shipping, drilling and mining industries, paid Black Cube to help him undermine an advisory panel appointed by Lapid that was aiming to raise taxes on his lucrative natural resources company, according to the TV investigation. The idea was to smear Lapid and the arbitrators in order to continue evading high taxes on his profits after Israel discovered a large offshore natural gas field.
Black Cube, a company of former Israeli intelligence agents, has drawn international attention for allegedly working to discredit officials within the former US president Barack Obama’s administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement, as well as to protect the reputation of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Thursday’s investigation also explored Black Cube’s ties to former president of the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila, who reportedly used the company’s services to suppress opposition activists.
Black Cube denied the allegations, saying it never met with Ofer or targeted politicians, judges or regulators. The company said it was suing the TV show and its anchor in a British court for £15m. A clerk at Britain’s Royal Courts of Justice confirmed that a lawsuit had been filed but said he was barred from providing further details.
A spokesman for Ofer confirmed he had contracted the agency for a brief period, but said Ofer ended up not using Black Cube’s intelligence. He stressed the company gathered evidence only from public sources.
Lapid, now co-leader of the opposition Blue and White party, said nothing influences his decisions and he would “keep working without fearing anyone”.
Baltimore this month joined Atlanta, San Diego and Newark in the list of US cities hit by ransomware attacks as the cyber intrusions are expected to continue
“We won’t talk more, all we know is MONEY! Hurry up!”
This was the ransom note that confronted Baltimore officials on 7 May when hackers crippled government computers with a virus, taking the systems hostage. The ongoing cyber-attack has halted real estate transactions and shut down websites for processing water bills and other services.
Continue reading...Company admits to mistake and says it has no evidence of abuse – but the risk was huge
Facebook mistakenly stored “hundreds of millions” of passwords in plaintext, unprotected by any encryption, the company has admitted.
The mistake, which led to user passwords being kept in Facebook’s internal servers in an insecure way, affects “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users”, according to the social networking site. Facebook Lite is a version of Facebook created for use in nations where mobile data is unaffordable or unavailable.
Continue reading...Huge cache of documents published daily in December but came to light only on Thursday
Sensitive data belonging to hundreds of German politicians, celebrities and public figures has been published online via a Twitter account in what is thought to be one of the largest leaks in the country’s history.
The huge cache of documents includes personal phone numbers and addresses, internal party documents, credit card details and private chats.
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