Free Republic

The German Justice Minister Heiko Maas claims that social media sites don’t do enough to combat hate speech online and has threatened sites with further European Union (EU) regulation.

A remotely exploitable vulnerability in web application code, first discovered 15 years ago, has returned to haunt server admins who are being urged to take action immediately to avoid being hit. Researchers from New Zealand point of sale software company Vend, Dominic Scheirlink, Richard Rowe, Morgan Pyne and Scott Geary, worked with Red Hat product security staffer Kurt Seifried to document the flaw, which they have nicknamed Httpoxy. On vulnerable applications, the Httpoxy flaw is easily exploitable, the researchers said. Attackers can proxy outgoing HTTP requests and direct the server to open outwards connections to arbitrary IP addresses and transport...

... Ransomware variants are multiplying like rabbits: while some are more sophisticated and tougher to combat, others are more about scamming than kidnapping. Take the new Ranscam malware discovered by Cisco’s Talos team, a low-tech but highly destructive attack that demands ransom from its victims but never returns them their files because it actually deleted them. Ranscam isn’t the first ransomware variant to destroy files rather than return them after victims pay up—there’s AnonPop and JIGSAW, for example—but it’s a glaring example of how the ransomware scam itself is so lucrative and easy to pull off that less sophisticated attackers...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal appeals court delivered a victory to U.S. companies housing customer data overseas, ruling Thursday that prosecutors cannot force Microsoft to reveal content from a customer's email account stored in Ireland. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned a lower court order finding the company in civil contempt for not handing over the data. Microsoft offers storage through its "public cloud," which places data from over 1 billion customers and over 20 million businesses on servers in over 40 countries, the court noted.

I want to permanently delete my Pandora account If you would like to permanently deactivate, cancel, delete your account, or remove the data associated with your account.... Delete a Free Pandora Account Log into your account from a computer (not a mobile device) at www.pandora.com. Click on your name (or email address) in the upper right corner of the screen, select Settings > Account > Delete Account. Follow the prompts to delete your account by confirming your password. Delete a Pandora One Account If you would like to delete your account completely, you will first need to cancel your Pandora...

When is it a crime -- punishable with time behind bars -- for citizens to access a company's database with someone else's password? For years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has wrestled with that question. This month, a three-judge panel ruled that under a 1986 federal law, using other people's work passwords with their permission, but not their employers' authorization, could land you in prison. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Judge Margaret McKeown wrote, "does not make the millions of people who engage in this ubiquitous, useful, and generally harmless conduct into unwitting federal...

Today the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment. Section 230 provides immunity from lawsuits to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in government-sanctioned censorship and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Jihad Watch. As alleged in the lawsuit, Geller and Spencer, along with the organizations they run, are often...

Radio-based music streamer Pandora is warning it’s users to change their passwords thanks to a breach in a different service leading to hacking risks.

A Vierkirchen couple was in front of the district court in Dachau being accused of sedition. The husband had created a group that was hostile towards refugees.

Facebook is being hit with a $1 billion lawsuit after allegedly allowing the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas use its platform to plot attacks in Israel and the West Bank that killed and wounded Americans. According to Bloomberg News: "Plaintiffs include the families of Yaakov Naftali Fraenkel, a 16-year-old abducted and murdered in June 2014 after hitching a ride in the West Bank, and 3-year-old Chaya Braun, whose stroller was struck intentionally by a Palestinian driver in October 2014 at a train station in Jerusalem." “Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook’s online...

Admins of the lighthearted political page “Liberty Memes” have been suspended from Facebook and had images mocking Hillary Clinton deleted from their page. The Facebook page, boasting over 100K likes, has had multiple images removed as they apparently don’t “follow the Facebook Community Standards”. One of the most recent images removed was one that poked fun at Hillary Clinton and the recent recommendation by the FBI not to press charges following Clinton’s email scandal. The image received approximately 10K likes, 50K shares and 4 million views before it was promptly removed from the page for violating community standards. The image...

A new federal court ruling could make sharing your passwords for subscription services -- covering everything from Netflix to HBO GO -- a federal crime punishable by prison time, according to a judge who opposed the decision. The ruling, issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week, pertained to a trade-secrets case and found that certain instances of sharing passwords are prosecutable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) - legislation predominantly concerned with hacking. The case involved David Nosal, a headhunter who left his former company Korn/Ferry and then used the password of an employee to...

p>Since February, a number of Apple users have reported locked devices displaying ransom demands written in Russian.Earlier this week, a security professional posted a message to a private email group requesting information related a possible compromise of at least 40 million iCloud accounts.Salted Hash started digging around on this story after the email came to our attention. In it, a list member questioned the others about a rumor concerning "rumblings of a massive (40 million) data breach at Apple."How to respond to ransomware threatsThe message goes on to state that the alleged breach was conducted by a Russian actor, and...

A curious thing happened today with my Paypal account. I was trying to add money to Paypal from my bank account and I got an Error message that said I cannot add funds at this time. So I called Paypal and the young lady that answered the phone apologized and told me I would need to talk to a specialist. The specialist came on the line and informed me that I did not need to add funds to my account because Paypal would go ahead and pay whatever charges I made on my Paypal debit card and just pull the...

#JohnnyManziel as the designated driver. #MoreTrustedThanHillary...

Democrats targeting content and control of the Internet, especially from conservative sources, are pushing hard to layer on new regulations and even censorship under the guise of promoting diversity while policing bullying, warn commissioners from the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission. “Protecting freedom on the Internet is just one vote away,” said Lee E. Goodman, a commissioner on the FEC which is divided three Democrats to three Republicans. “There is a cloud over your free speech.” Freedom of speech on the Internet, added Ajit Pai, commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, “is increasingly under threat.” Pai and Goodman...

Hackers are stealing credit card information in Europe with malware that can spoof the user interfaces of Uber, WhatsApp and Google Play. The malware, which has struck Android users in Denmark, Italy and Germany, has been spreading through a phishing campaign over SMS (short message service), security vendor FireEye said on Tuesday. Once downloaded, the malware will create fake user interfaces on the phone as an “overlay” on top of real apps. These interfaces ask for credit card information and then send the entered data to the hacker.

DENVER, June 28 (UPI) -- Hillary Clinton pledged Tuesday she would bring "affordable" broadband Internet access to all U.S. homes by 2020 as part of a series of proposals to increase web access and bolster the tech sector of the economy. Presently, the Federal Communications Commission reports 10 percent of Americans, roughly 34 million people, do not have access to broadband Internet. The vast majority of them are people living in rural areas, where tech companies have declined to install the infrastructure necessary to bring high-speed Internet to a small number customers due to the cost.

Many fathers like to play pranks on their children, but not many will go far enough to mock them for all of the Internet to see. One father though, has no problem with mocking his teenage son and daughter online, much to the enjoyment of his fans. So my daughter has been posting sexy selfies of herself and instead of telling her to stop, well, I thought of something better,' the comedian and pod-caster wrote on Instagram.

Three US healthcare organisations are reportedly being held to ransom by a hacker who stole data on hundreds of thousands of patients. The hacker has also put the 650,000 records up for sale on dark web markets where stolen data is traded. Prices for the different databases range from $100,000 (£75,000) to $411,000. ... The organisations that data was stolen from are known to be based in Missouri, Georgia and the midwest. The attacker told Motherboard that he would not name the organisations, to give them a chance to pay up. The news site said it had checked 30 records...