Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing Technology Co. is setting its sights on Japan. Under a new deal with SoftBank Group Corp. announced Thursday, Didi will run a trial of its services in Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Tokyo and other locations with an aim of setting up shop permanently should the trial be successful. The venture, which may operate ...

Cryptocurrency markets were spooked in trading Thursday after leading bitcoin exchange Binance went offline for over 24 hours without warning. Hong Kong-based Binance went offline at approximately 7 p.m. EST Wednesday as part of a system upgrade that the company said would result in a “decrease in exchange performance” for a period of four hours. A ...

Databases detailing 19.5 million Californian voter records as well as 53,000 newspaper subscribers have been stolen after a newspaper left both files exposed online. The leak from The Sacramento Bee, reported today, was discovered by the Kromtech Security Center, which found a 91.5-gigabyte MongoDB database file Jan. 19 via a breach report based on Shodan, an “internet of ...

Everipedia Inc., a for-profit Wikipedia competitor, today said it has raised $30 million to move its “next generation encyclopedia” onto a blockchain. The Series A round was led by Galaxy Digital’s EOS.IO Ecosystem Fund and included the Distributed Network Advisors Fund. Founded in 2014, Everipedia has been described as “a more lively Wikipedia for the Snapchat generation.” At its base, Everipedia does ...

Bellevue, Washington-based Icertis Inc. has raised $50 million in new funding to expand its cloud contract management platform. The Series D round was led by Meritech Capital Partners and also included PSP Growth, Cross Creek Advisors, B Capital Group, Ignition Partners, Greycroft and Eight Roads Ventures. Founded in 2009, Icertis offers a contract lifecycle management cloud platform that seeks ...

Reddit Inc. is the latest site to ban artificial intelligence-generated fake porn as the practice continues to gain widespread popularity. The fake porn, dubbed “deepfakes,” uses AI software to superimpose the face of a celebrity, such as Alexandra Daddario (pictured), over existing porn. Although the generation of fake porn is not a new practice, software ...

Russian hackers have targeted and obtained secret data on military drones and other sensitive U.S. defense technology, according to a report published Tuesday by the Associated Press. The report details efforts by Fancy Bear, the notorious Russian hacking group previously tied to attacks against U.S. lawmakers and the Democratic National Committee, to target and successfully infiltrate military contractors ...

In a seeming coincidence, Twitter Inc. suspended the account of a prominent Bitfinex critic on the same day that Gab, a Twitter alternative that claims to be dedicated to free speech, announced it had raised $4.8 million in a crowdfunding campaign. On the Twitter front, Bitfinex’ed was suspended without explanation. The Twitter account, run by an anonymous critic ...

The U.S. Department of Justice has led a global effort to shut down a huge online cybercrime forum, resulting in the arrest of both people involved in running it and those who used its services. The site, called the Infraud Organization or Infraud for short, was established in 2010 as a forum on the shady ...

The price of bitcoin surged Tuesday after presentations by U.S. regulators at a Senate hearing on cryptocurrencies delivered no surprises. Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Senate banking committee that they needed new powers to protect consumers from fraud on cryptocurrency exchanges. But they ...