Duncan Riley
Latest from Duncan Riley
US asks federal court to throw out Huawei ban lawsuit
U.S. government officials filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. over a ban against its equipment being used by government agencies. The ban in question, not to be confused with a later, since partially rescinded ban on the export of U.S. technology to Huawei, banned the use of Huawei and ZTE Corp. equipment by U.S. government ...
DHS warns state officials about 2020 election phishing threats
An official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has warned a meeting of top state election officials to be cautious of hacking attempts targeting local and state election workers in the lead up to the 2020 elections. Geoff Hale (pictured), director of the DHS Election Security Initiative, told a meeting of secretaries of state on ...
Robotic lawyer startup DoNotPay raises $4.6M
Robotic lawyer startup DoNotPay Ltd. today said it has raised $4.6 million in new funding to expand its service into new markets. The seed funding round was back by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z, Greylock Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Tuesday Capital and a range of individual investors. Founded in 2016, DoNotPay offers an automated lawyer chatbot ...
DerpTrolling hacker sentenced to 27 months behind bars
A 23-year-old man who was involved in multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks in December 2013 and January 2014 that targeted online gaming services has been sentenced to 27 months in prison. Austin Thompson, known online as DerpTroll, was part of a group known as DerpTrolling that attacked and successfully targeted Sony Online Entertainment, Valve Inc.’s Steam and ...
CRM blockchain startup Cere Network gets funding from NEO, Arrington and Binance
Blockchain customer relationship management startup Cere Network has raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding to help it develop what it claims is the world’s first blockchain CRM and customer data platform ecosystem. The funding, which follows the company’s graduation from the Binance Lab’s Incubation Program in June, came from NEO Global Capital, Arrington XRP Capital ...
Vulnerabilities in Zipato smart home devices let hackers open doors
Two security researchers have published details of vulnerabilities in communications hubs that connect to smart home locks manufactured by Zipato that can allow hackers to open doors easily. Detailed today by Chase Dardaman and Jason Wheeler at Blackmarble, two of the vulnerabilities relate to the design and implementation of the authentication mechanism in the Zipato application ...
China border guards allegedly installing spyware on tourists’ phones
Chinese border guards are allegedly installing spyware on the phones of people who enter some land borders in the country’s far west, according to reports from Motherboard and others today. The spyware in question, going by the names of BXAQ or Fengcai, is said to be part of an app being installed on Android phones by border ...
Samsung schedules Galaxy Note 10 launch event for Aug. 7
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has scheduled an “Unpacked” launch event for Aug. 7 that’s expected to feature the announcement of the Galaxy Note 10, the latest premium phone in the South Korean’s giant’s smartphone lineup. Officially, the event in New York City, announced late Monday, will “unveil new devices designed to take the Galaxy ecosystem’s ...
Billions of user logs from Chinese smart home device maker Orvibo found online
Billions of user logs from users of devices manufactured by Chinese smart home device maker Orvibo Inc. have been found online in the latest of many unnecessary data exposures. Discovered by security researchers at vpnMentor and revealed today, the breach included data such as usernames, email addresses, passwords and location information. It was found sitting on ...
Will the Trump administration’s play to ban end-to-end encryption backfire?
Joining other western countries, the Trump administration is said to be considering effectively banning end-to-end encryption by mandating back doors, according to a Politico report late last week. End-to-end encryption is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. Providing the ultimate level of privacy to users, the system is also ...









