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A major cyberattack on big US telecom companies has led officials to recommend that people use encrypted messaging apps. Microsoft named the attack "Salt Typhoon," and it's affecting companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies. Officials haven't released a timeline for when everything will be fixed, but they did say that a lot of different types of information were accessed in the breach. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) advised using encrypted messaging apps like Signal or iMessage to reduce the chances of messages being intercepted. This essentially means to stop using SMS because it's not...

The British university student who was killed in the tragic Titanic submarine 'implosion' was 'terrified' about the trip and only joined the crew to please his dad for Father's Day, his heartbroken aunt has revealed. Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, 19, were two of the five victims killed instantly when the OceanGate submersible suffered a 'catastrophic implosion' just 1,600ft from the bow of the Titanic, according to the US Coast Guard. The other victims were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French Navy veteran Paul-Henri (PH) Nargeolet and British billionaire Hamish Harding. They had been missing since the Titan...

Telecom equipment maker Ericsson plans to lay off 8,500 of its employees globally to cut costs, according to a memo sent to employees from the company’s CEO Börje Ekholm. “The way headcount reductions will be managed will differ depending on local country practice,” Ekholm wrote. According to Reuters, the layoffs are predicted to affect North America and would be the largest to hit the telecom industry. The company announced Monday that about 1,400 jobs in Sweden will be slashed as well. “In several countries, the headcount reductions have already been communicated this week,” he said. Ericsson is the latest telecom...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Verizon and AT&T have rejected a request by the U.S. government to delay the rollout of next-generation wireless technology. A joint letter Sunday from the telecommunications giants to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Steve Dickson, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, sought to dismiss concerns brought by U.S. airlines that a new 5G wireless service could harm aviation. But Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon Communications, and John Stankey, CEO of AT&T, also wrote that they were willing to accept some temporary measures over the next six months to limit the service around certain airport runways....

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Oct. 26 voted unanimously to bar a leading Chinese state-owned telecommunication firm’s U.S. arm from operating in the country.China Telecom Americas, a subsidiary of China Telecom, now has 60 days to discontinue services after having operated in the United States for two decades.The FCC voted 4-0 to terminate China Telecom America’s license to provide domestic and international services within the United States. The regulator said the firm “is subject to exploitation, influence, and control by the Chinese government” and is “highly likely” to comply with Beijing’s orders.The decision concluded more than a year of...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Sept. 27 announced the start date for a $1.9 billion program to repay U.S. telecom carriers to “rip and replace” network equipment manufactured by Huawei, ZTE, and other China-based companies designated as national security threats.Carriers will be able to apply for the funds beginning on Oct. 29 through Jan. 14, 2022. The FCC adopted rules in December last year requiring carriers to replace all equipment made by Huawei and ZTE.The FCC designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats on June 30 last year, barring U.S. firms from using an $8.3 billion government fund...

Al-Shabaab is responsible for many terrible terror attacks. A couple of examples are: the 2015 attack on the University of Kenya in which 147 people were killed and 79 others were injured, and the attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in which 59 innocents were killed and 150 were injured. In other words, we're truly talking about one of the worst and most bloodthirsty terror groups in the entire world. As such, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Al-Shabaab is linked to Al-Qaeda.What is surprising, however, is that a company that's known for providing financial...

If your T-Mobile service was having issues on Monday, you were not alone. The third-largest wireless carrier is seemingly having widespread issues around the country impacting the ability to make calls and text. It is unclear what caused the issue or when it will be resolved. Users across the country took to Twitter to note the outage, with T-Mobile rising to the top spot on the site's US Trending Topics as of 9:00 p.m. ET.

The agency on April 24 issued “show cause orders” to China Telecom Americas, China Unicom Americas, Pacific Networks Corp, and its wholly-owned subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC, directing them to explain why the FCC shouldn’t start the process of revoking their authorizations to operate in the country. ...the order reflects “deep concern” among federal agencies about “these companies’ vulnerability to the exploitation, influence, and control of the Chinese Communist Party, given that they are subsidiaries of Chinese state-owned entities,” Pai said. “No matter their cries to the contrary, these firms are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, and their operation in...

Exclusive: Whistleblower’s data suggests millions of tracking requests sent over four-month periodSaudi Arabia appears to be exploiting weaknesses in the global mobile telecoms network to track its citizens as they travel around the US, according to a whistleblower who has shown the Guardian millions of alleged secret tracking requests. Data revealed by the whistleblower, who is seeking to expose vulnerabilities in a global messaging system called SS7, appears to suggest a systematic spying campaign by the kingdom, according to experts. The data suggests that millions of secret tracking requests emanated from Saudi Arabia over a four-month period beginning in November...

21 million cell phone accounts in China were cancelled after coronavirusSince the outbreak of Novel Coronavirus which emerged in China's Wuhan, the pandemic has killed 15,374 people globally and infected 351,731 individuals. Recently the death toll in Italy surpassed the initial epicentre of the outbreak in China, where officially 3,153 people have died due to the COVID-19. But recently Beijing authorities announced on March 19 that more than 21 million cell phone accounts were cancelled while in past three months 840,000 landlines were closed in China, which gives an idea that probably these closed numbers belonged to the people who...

Feb. 11 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Tuesday approved a bid by T-Mobile to merge with competitor Sprint in a combination of the nation's third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers. Judge Victor Marrero of U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled against 13 state attorneys general who sought to block the $26 billion deal as potentially harmful to consumers. They sued in June 2019, even before the merger was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. The companies argued their merger was needed to compete against the biggest wireless carriers, AT&T and Verizon, and to complete...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, January 28, 2020   First of its Kind Enforcement Action by the Justice Department The Department of Justice filed civil actions for temporary restraining orders today in two landmark cases against five companies and three individuals allegedly responsible for carrying hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls to American consumers, the Department of Justice announced.  The Department of Justice alleges that the companies were warned numerous times that they were carrying fraudulent robocalls — including government- and business-imposter calls — and yet continued to carry those calls and facilitate...

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Huawei Opens a New Window. founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei estimates the tech company’s revenue will be $30 billion less than forecast over the next two years due to the U.S. government’s ban and ongoing trade dispute with China Opens a New Window. . "We never thought that the U.S.'s determination to attack Huawei would be so strong, so firm," Ren said Monday during a panel discussion at company headquarters in Shenzhen. “…We cannot get components supply, cannot participate in many international organizations, cannot work closely with many universities, cannot use anything with U.S. components, and cannot even establish connection...

Mobile phone retailers in some Asian countries are refusing to accept Huawei devices for trade-ins, as more consumers look to offload their device on worries Google suspending business with the Chinese firm will disrupt services. Google has said it will comply with an order by U.S. President Donald Trump to stop supplying Huawei, meaning current owners of Huawei phones face being cut off from updates of the Android operating system from late August. New phones will lose access to popular apps such as YouTube and Chrome.

A federal judge this week struck down a controversial set of laws allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek people's records without a court's approval, saying the strict secrecy orders demanded by the laws are not constitutional. Judge Susan Illston, of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said the laws, which underlie a tool known as a "national security letter," violate the First Amendment and the separation of powers principles. In her order, Judge Illston ordered the government to stop issuing national security letters or enforcing their gag orders, although she said enforcement of her judgment...

In 1969, it was space travel. Today, the world’s most tech-savvy nations are in a race for 5G – networks that operate 100 times more quickly than today’s cellular networks. So what’s behind this competition to achieve 5G? First, buffering and lag will be a thing of the past, reducing the download time of a two-hour movie – which now requires six minutes – to only 3.6 seconds. But the impacts of 5G are more far-reaching than faster download speeds on our mobile devices. 5G allows for the lighting-speed transmission of massive amounts of data, making the potential applications of...

Buying the best quality and most up to date smartphone can be a hard choice. But why? Because there are really only two options: Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy. The renowned Samsung Group (KRX: 005930) is Korea’s largest ‘chaebol’ (conglomerate). To people outside Korea, Samsung is purely a technology company. However this family-controlled business operates in a wide spectrum of fields, from engineering to chemicals. The diagram below illustrates the complexity of the Samsung Empire....

Back on April 26, 2016, liberal reporter Michael Isikoff reported on Trump’s chief campaign aide Paul Manafort connections to a billionaire Russian oligarch. This was a week after Donald Trump sealed the Republican nomination in the 2016 primary. Paul Manafort was questioned by officials in the Cayman Islands about his ties to billionaire Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate. Manafort was questioned by officials from the Cayman Islands in connection with a $26.2 million investment by Deripaska. Yahoo reported: A lawyer for Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s chief campaign aide, acknowledged Tuesday evening that the longtime GOP operative has...