Wednesday, August 28, 2019
PEs exit Micromax via buyback, valuation crashes 93% in 4 years
Bigger bite: Apple to sell directly in India through online first
Federal grand jury indicts Paige Thompson on two counts related to the Capital One data breach
The Department of Justice said today that a federal grand jury has indicted software engineer Paige Thompson on two counts related to the Capital One data breach that affected over 100 million customers. The charges in the indictment carry penalties of up to 25 years in prison. Thompson will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Sept. 5.
Thompson allegedly created created software that allowed her to see which customers of a cloud computing company (the indictment does not name the company, but it has been identified as Amazon Web Services) had misconfigured their firewalls and accessed data from Capital One and more than other 30 companies.
Much of the information in today’s indictment was already included in the FBI’s criminal complaint filed in July. In the indictment, however, the Department of Justice includes the new allegation that Thompson used the cloud servers she allegedly breached for cryptojacking. Though Thompson had previously made references to cryptojacking, or stealing someone else’s processing power to mine cryptocurrencies, in Slack messages reported by Forbes, today’s indictment does not contain new evidence about why the Department of Justice is making those claims.
Research has found that cryptojacking may be on the rise, in part because many organizations do not have adequate security measures in place.
In its statement, the Department of Justice said it has identified some of the victims of the data breach, including a state agency and a public research university located outside Washington state and a telecommunications conglomerate outside of the U.S. The indictment did not name the victims, but security firm CyberInt has said that Vodafone, Ford, Michigan State University and the Ohio Department of Transportation may all be victims of the data breach, which also included 106 credit card applications and files copied from a cloud server by Thompson.
ETtech Top 5: No ecomm data in proposed privacy bill, Micromax valuation crash & more
Amazon India gross sales to hit $32B in 4 years: Report
Global retailers to gain from easier single-brand FDI rules
Jambos Picks raises $23M seed for its AI-based sports bet recommendations service that offers refunds to subscribers if recommendations are not profitable (Kieran McQuilkin/American Inno)
Jambos Picks raises $23M seed for its AI-based sports bet recommendations service that offers refunds to subscribers if recommendations are not profitable — A big name, a risky market and a bold guarantee. Ex-MLB pitcher Michael Schwimer has the makings of a fascinating D.C. startup on his hands.
Indictment of the Capital One hacker alleges that she used exploited servers of Capital One and those of over 30 other companies to mine cryptocurrency (James Thorne/GeekWire)
Indictment of the Capital One hacker alleges that she used exploited servers of Capital One and those of over 30 other companies to mine cryptocurrency — A federal grand jury indicted Paige Thompson, a former Amazon engineer, on multiple counts of wire fraud and computer fraud on allegations …
MeitY against ecomm data in Privacy Bill
Redmi Note 8 Series, Redmi TV, RedmiBook 14 Refresh Set to Launch Today
Alphabet’s legal chief, David Drummond, comes under the spotlight following new allegations about his personal conduct
Alphabet Chief Legal Officer David Drummond is at the center of a media firestorm, following a new Medium post authored by a former Google employee who was engaged in a years-long relationship with Drummond more than 10 years ago.
Though the extramarital affair was originally reported on last fall by the New York Times in the broader context of Google’s permissive workplace culture, the former employee, Jennifer Blakely, says in a new and far more detailed account of their relationship that Drummond was a serial philanderer, leaving his wife for Blakely, then leaving Blakely and the son that he fathered with her for another now-former Google employee.
She adds that Drummond also had “an affair with his ‘personal assistant’ who he moved into one of his new homes.”
We reached out to Google, asking for comment either from the company or Drummond, and have yet to hear back.
It’s an enormously unflattering portrait and it comes at a delicate time for Google, which found itself at the center of the #metoo movement last year, after the Times revealed that another former executive, Andy Rubin, had been awarded a handsome exit package following a sexual misconduct claim that the company reportedly found credible.
In addition to accusing Drummond of neglecting her, Blakely also accuses him of being an absentee parent to the child who she suggests they tried for years to have, writing that “[m]onths or years would go by where he wouldn’t see [their son] or respond to my calls or texts with updates and pictures of him or even ask how he was doing, let alone how he might help out, knowing full well I was alone and in desperate need.”
Elsewhere in her post, Blakely says that following a custody battle over the boy that she won when he was four-and-a-half-years old, “David began providing ample child support.”
According to several sources familiar with the situation, it’s more nuanced than Blakely describes and it was not a particularly happy union, though these same individuals acknowledge that much of her account is true. Drummond, who was Google’s general counsel back in 2001 when they met, was married when he began an affair with Blakeley, who’d been hired into Google’s legal department as a senior contracts manager. Though Google merely discouraged managers from having affairs with subordinates at the time (it wasn’t against the company’s code of conduct), when Drummond finally told the company in 2007 that Blakeley was pregnant with his child, she was moved into a role in the company’s sales department, far from the company’s legal department.
Blakely writes she had “zero experience in sales” and that it was a hard transition to make: “I did my best to keep up but I was floundering and became depressed at work.”
She left the company roughly one year later, in 2008. She says she and Drummond and their son were living together by that time, adding that seven months later, he broke up with her via text, saying he was “never coming back” to their shared home.
“And he didn’t,” she writes.
Drummond’s star has continued to rise at Google, where he has now spent 17 years and currently serves as its senior vice president of corporate development, as well as the chief legal officer for Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Google has made numerous changes in the face of criticisms that male executives at the company have not faced consequences in the past for sexual misconduct at work — criticisms that boiled into anger, then walk-outs by tens of thousands of Google employees.
Among them: Google no longer force employees to settle disputes with the company in private arbitration, including in cases of sexual harassment or assault; employees can now lodge complaints relating to harassment and other misconduct via a dedicated website; an and they can bring colleagues to support them to meetings related to investigations.
Still, Google has never commented specifically on Blakely’s allegations and it will be curious to see if this newest salvo forces its hand.
The affair, and others at the company, don’t seem to have forced dramatic changes to its official code of contact, in any case.
According to a section titled: “Friends and Relatives; Co-Worker Relationships,” it cautions employees that “romantic relationships between co-workers can, depending on the work roles and respective positions of the co-workers involved, create an actual or apparent conflict of interest. If a romantic relationship does create an actual or apparent conflict, it may require changes to work arrangements or even the termination of employment of either or both individuals involved. Consult Google’s Employee Handbook for additional guidance on this issue.”
BJD MP Pinaki Misra questions TikTok on exclusive contracts
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Redmi Note 8 Pro Full Specifications Leaked Ahead of Tomorrow's Launch
Oppo Set to Make India a Global Export Hub
A profile of US District Court judge Amit P. Mehta, who is presiding over the US v. Google case, which could set a precedent for other US tech antitrust cases (Steve Lohr/New York Times)
Steve Lohr / New York Times : A profile of US District Court judge Amit P. Mehta, who is presiding over the US v. Google case, which coul...
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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Andrew Tarantola / Engadget : An adapted excerpt from the book “Your Computer Is on Fire”, on how voice assistants like Siri and Alexa al...
