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technology Tag

You gotta love government agencies. They lash out when private businesses hurt consumers and yet evidence always seems to surface that they do the exact same thing, sometimes even worse. Take the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency not many know about. Dodd-Frank birthed this agency as a way to protect consumers from another financial crisis. Its webpage claims that it "makes sure banks, lenders, and other financial companies treat you fairly."

An initiative sponsored by the Embassy of Israel in India seeks to connect Jerusalem's startup ecosystem with India's technology scene. Contrary to the popular perception, Jerusalem is fast catching up with Tel Aviv as a leading technology center in the world. In 2015, TIME magazine named Jerusalem as one of the world’s fastest growing hi-tech hubs. The annual startup competition "Start JLM", supported by Indian government and local private sector players, is being held in the country for the first time. This year's winner, Bangalore-based Mimyk startup will be taking part in an technology boost camp in Jerusalem. Four other finalists will be getting access to startup incubators.

In July, major national credit-reporting company Equifax was hit by a cyberattack that exposed personal information of about 143 million U.S. consumers. Three executives at the company sold shares that totaled $1.8 million only a few days after the company learned of the breach. However, Equifax didn't reveal details about the breach until September 7. Now the Department of Justice (DOJ) has reportedly opened an investigation to find out if those executives violated insider trading laws.

India wants to strengthen ties with Israeli start ups, a visiting delegation of Indian IT companies to the Jewish State stressed. The delegation was organised by Nasscom, Indian association representing software companies, and the global consulting firm Accenture. "The Nasscom Product Council and IT consulting major Accenture plan to collaborate with Israel Innovation Authority to help startups from both countries in joint product development, knowledge transfer and in the creation of hardware ecosystem," Indian business daily Economic Times reported.

On Thursday, major national credit-reporting company Equifax revealed that a cyberattack from July exposed personal information of about 143 million U.S. consumers. The company wrote in a statement:
The information accessed primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver's license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed. As part of its investigation of this application vulnerability, Equifax also identified unauthorized access to limited personal information for certain UK and Canadian residents. Equifax will work with UK and Canadian regulators to determine appropriate next steps. The company has found no evidence that personal information of consumers in any other country has been impacted.

Amazon passed two major hurdles on Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Whole Foods' shareholders cleared the way for the internet giant to acquire the grocery chain. With that out of the away, Amazon is going all in and has already announced it plans on slashing Whole Foods prices as early as Monday.

Back in 2003, Bill Burr wrote the primer on password development.  His definitive work recommended random characters, letters, numbers, caps, casing, etc. in a mishmosh that the user not only had to remember (or remember where they'd recorded it) but had to, per his '03 recommendation, change each month into another nonsensical string of random characters and letters. Burr now regrets these rules and says that he was wrong about them.

Netflix took a major blow on Tuesday when Disney announced it will remove all of its content in 2019 to start its own streaming service. ESPN, which Disney owns, will start a streaming service in 2018. From The Hollywood Reporter:
Details of the Disney streaming service were sketchy Tuesday, with CEO Bob Iger saying that if a movie is Pixar- or Disney-branded, it will probably appear exclusively on the new service — including shows and movies made specifically for the service — but the jury is still out on Marvel and Star Wars films.

The FBI has arrested Marcus Hutchins, the British security researcher that stopped the WannaCry ransomeware attack, for allegedly being a part of a software attack on banking accounts. The Guardian reported:
According to an indictment released by the US Department of Justice on Thursday, Hutchins is accused of having helped to create, spread and maintain the banking trojan Kronos between 2014 and 2015.

The FBI and Dutch authorities have successfully shut down AlphaBay and Hansa, two of the largest marketplaces on the dark web, which sold drugs, firearms, malware, and forged documents. AlphaBay, which the FBI seized, "allegedly serviced some 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors." It disappeared earlier this month with Attorney General Jeff Sessions describing the seizure as "one of the most important criminal investigations of the year."

In a stunning display, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel received favourable coverage from across the Indian media landscape. The Indian Prime Minister was in Israel on a 3-day visit, first ever by an Indian premier. Prime Minister Modi’s visit lays “the foundation of a new chapter in relations with Israel," commented the country's leading business daily Economic Times. Both countries took "historic steps towards a new engagement," wrote newspaper Hindustan Times. Like many Indian newspapers, The Hindu described the visit as "ground-breaking" and noted the "extraordinary welcome" Indian leader received in "the Jewish nation."

Just days ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic visit to Israel, an Israeli-Indian partnership has announced the creation of a funding platform to help start-ups find investors in each other’s country. Israel’s equity crowdfunding firm OurCrowd and India's leading start-up platform LetsVenture have joined hands to create an 'India Fund' for Israeli and Indian start-ups, seeking to rope in big investors, family funds and OurCrowd’s own global network of investors. “India is a critical growth market for our business with a huge number of very exciting startup investment opportunities in a range of sectors,” OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said.

The Petya ransomeware took off yesterday across the globe, affecting state-owned and private businesses in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. The BBC has now reported that it "may have started via corrupted updates on a piece of accountancy software." The ransomeware hit Ukraine hardest since it attacked the country's "power grid, banks and government offices" and disrupted some flights at Kyiv's Boryspil Airport. Other companies hit included pharmaceutical giant Merck and Russia's state owned energy company Rosneft.

The world faced a massive ransomware attack using WannaCry, an NSA hacking tool last week, which affected 150 countries. While investigating the WannaCry attack, experts found another ongoing cyber attack. The cybersecurity firm Proofpoint said the newly discovered attack, using Adylkuzz, is a lot quieter than WannaCry, but "has likely generated millions of dollars in cryptocurrency for the unknown attackers." ABC News continued:
According to Ryan Kalember, the senior vice president for cybersecurity at Proofpoint, the attack employed the same hacking tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and leaked to the public by the hacker group Shadow Brokers in April to exploit vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system.

A large-scale ransomware attack, WannaCry, that infected computers all over the world left governments, health care institutions, and companies reeling. Britain's National Health Service was infected, resulting in the temporary closure of some emergency rooms. Ransomware infects a computer, locking users out of certain applications or files until a ransom is paid. PC casualties were expected to rise today as workers return to work to find WannaCry infecting their work PCs.

Police across the country have developed different techniques to catch people who text while driving. The Wall Street Journal reported that authorities have a hard time going after people for texting while driving because it is hard to prove "and citations can be contested in court." Some officers have disguised themselves as construction workers while others pose as panhandlers in order to catch those who text and drive.