The use of facial recognition technology is often controversial in terms of privacy and bias issues, and some even suggest it should be banned. But ethical considerations aside, is it really that effective? Apparently not. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is one user of facial recognition technology. In 2020, a year that did see a drop ...

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has issued an urgent warning concerning a phishing scam that seeks to steal Electronic Filing Identification Numbers. The scam, which emerged just before the tax filing season began Feb. 12, involves emails that impersonate the IRS with a subject line “verifying your EFIN before e-filing.” The text of the email ...

Critical vulnerabilities in a popular WordPress plugin appear to have exposed more 100,000 websites to site takeovers. Detailed Wednesday by security researcher Chloe Chamberland at Wordfence, the vulnerabilities were found in Responsive Menu, a plugin that offers customizable mobile-friendly menu options in WordPress installs. The first vulnerability makes it possible for authenticated attackers with low-level permissions ...

U.S. government agencies have launched federal investigations into whether the social-media-driven activity around GameStop Corp.’s share price rise in January constituted illegal market manipulation. According to a report today in The Wall Street Journal, both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are formally investigating the pump of GME stock, and the Securities ...

Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Facebook Inc. to allow it to keep a number of domain names that imitate Facebook and Instagram used in security training programs. The drama began in November when Facebook filed a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution request with domain registrar Namecheap Inc. to gain control of several domain names that ...

Shares in Datadog Inc. dropped in after-hours trading today after the data monitoring and analytics provider’s 2021 earnings guidance came in lower than expected and the company announced the acquisition of two startups. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, Datadog reported a profit before costs such as stock compensation of six cents a share on revenue of $177.5 ...

Application programming interface security startup Traceable Inc. today announced a strategic partnership with Silicon Valley CISO Investments, an angel syndicate of 55 practicing chief information security officers. The amount of the funding, about $250,000 is less important than what the company calls “social equity” from the involvement of the CISOs providing not only capital but also advice ...

A security researcher has uncovered a security vulnerability that allowed him to run code on internal systems belonging to major companies, including Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Netflix Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., Tesla Inc. and others by exploiting open-source repositories. The supply chain attack was detailed late Tuesday by researcher and ethical hacker Alex Birsan and involved ...

Amazon Web Services Inc. announced today it has signed a deal with the National Hockey League to become the official cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning infrastructure provider of the largest ice hockey league in North America. Under the deal, AWS will enable the NHL to automate video processing and content delivery in the cloud and ...

Autonomous truck startup Plus announced today it has raised $200 million in new funding to accelerate the global commercialization and deployment of its automated trucking system. That will include the development of a sales and support network to help fleets integrate its automated trucking system and scale up deployments in the U.S. and China. The Series B ...