Today’s topics include federal indictments again four individuals including three Russian nationals on charges related to a massive 2014 Yahoo data breach, How Turkish political activists hacked a third-party Twitter App, Why the $15.3 billion purchase of Mobileye strengthens Intel’s position as a major playing in the driverless car market and Zuora adds more apps to its cloud business suite.
It turns out that Yahoo was correct when it claimed that nation-state backed attackers from Russia were responsible for the cyber-attack that breached the accounts of 500 million of its users in 2014.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on March 15 that a grand jury in the Northern District of California has formally indicted four defendants, including three Russian nationals and one resident of Canada in the breach.
“The indictment unequivocally shows the attacks on Yahoo were state-sponsored,” Chris Madsen, assistant general counsel and head of Global Law Enforcement, Security & Safety at Yahoo, wrote in a statement.
“We appreciate the FBI’s diligent investigative work and the DOJ’s decisive action to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes against Yahoo and its users.”
Yahoo first publicly disclosed that it was the victim of a 2014 breach last year.
Twitter users around the world were impacted by a hack perpetrated by Turkish activists early on Wednesday morning March 15. The attackers posted swastikas along with messages supporting Turkey’s president on the affected accounts.
Among the high-profile Twitter accounts impacted by the attack were BBC North America, European Parliament, Amnesty International, Forbes, World Meteorological Organization and scores of others.
The 3rd party app that was exploited in the attack against the Twitter accounts is suspected to be Twitter Counter, which confirmed that its’ service was indeed hacked.
Intel revealed March 13 that it figuratively will spend $15.3 billion to acquire autonomous vehicle-software maker Mobileye.
The transaction immediately gives Intel a strong new position in the market for autonomous vehicle technology while at the same time connecting it in a new way with more than a dozen of the most prominent automakers in the world.
The acquisition will result in an autonomous-driving Intel division that combines Mobileye with Intel’s Automated Driving Group. The team will be based in Jerusalem, Israel.
Zuora, a fast-growing software-as-a-service provider that offers cloud-based billing, recurring revenue, payments and billing solutions, on March 15 released a new developer center and added 30 new applications to its Connect platform.
There are now about 100 apps in the Connect marketplace that were created specifically for subscription businesses, including quoting, financial operations, data ingestion, e-signatures and ERP integrations.
The Foster City, Calif.-based company, which coined the term “subscription economy,” built the Connect app marketplace to give subscription businesses access to functionality from across the company’s cloud-based ecosystem.