Gsbt

Bitcoin  Bitcoin has done what regulators haven’t been able to accomplish — getting cybercriminals to lay off of cryptocurrencies as the ransom payment du jour in malware attacks. Bitcoin’s price swings over the past few days — from below $10,000 24 hours ago to more than $11,500 today — have stoked emotions ranging from fear of a bubble bursting to euphoria for a buying opportunity. But recent volatility has also unearthed an unlikely trend, causing cybercriminals to forego the sci-fi effect in ransomware demands and name their price in local currency rather than bitcoin. It’s not that bad actors have stopped developing malware, but due to an inability to properly value the cryptocurrency amid the wild ride between Q4 2017 and this week, they’re increasingly turning to more stable fiat money instead to protect their bottom line,  according to a Proofpoint report . The below chart reflects activity for the 90-day period leading up to mid-Dec...

Australian counter-terrorism police conduct raids across Sydney suburb Security has been increased at Australian airports after police foiled "Islamic-inspired" plans for a bomb attack on an aircraft during counter-terrorism raids in which four men were arrested on Saturday, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have confirmed. "In recent days, law enforcement has become aware of information that suggested some people in Sydney were planning to commit a terrorist act using an improvised device," AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin said during a press conference with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday, adding: "We do believe it is Islamic-inspired terrorism. Exactly what is behind this is something that we will need to investigate fully. "At this time we don’t have a great deal of information on the specific attack, the location, date or time. However, we are investigating information indicating that the aviation industry was potentially a target ......

A Yezidi fighter on Mount Sinjar. Matt Cetti-Roberts photo Victims include rival elites and ideological foes by PATRICK BURKE Rwanda, Srebrenica, Sinjar, Aleppo. There’s a whole generation of academics who have spent their careers attempting to explain these massacres. Their research has largely identified three types of armed groups that commit such atrocities. The first is a genocidal group trying to wipe out a population based on religious, ethnic or some other type of group identification. The Ottoman Turks’ genocide of Armenians during World War I is  one example . The second type is an armed group that selectively kills individuals who can potentially impede its military or political goals. This kind of group mainly kills suspected enemy collaborators or combatants it captures. For example, Yoweri Musevini’s National Resistance Army in Uganda  practiced selective killing  throughout the 1980s. The third is a group that kills at random owing to its inability ...

Vizio did everything wrong when it comes to data collection. Vizio has been fined $2.2 million by  the Federal Trade Commission  for "surreptitiously collecting details on viewers' watching habits." The company also agreed to delete all the data collected before March 1, 2016, and to get specific consent from users with a new privacy program. Vizio's Smart Interactivity technology isn't much different from what other smart TV manufacturers use to find out exactly what you watch and when you watch it. The difference, according to  ProPublica , stems from the way Vizio went about collecting it and what they did with it afterward. For starters, Smart Interactivity is active and running unless you specifically opt out, and you're not told it's there or that opting out is even possible. Oddly enough, the instructions to tell you  how  to opt out have disappeared from Vizio's support site and have been replaced by a 404 error page. Thankfully,  Viz...

Culture Minister Cho Yoon-sun arrives at the Seoul Central District court in Seoul, South Korea, January 20, 2017. Yoo Seung-kwan/News1 via REUTERS South Korea's special prosecutor has indicted a former culture minister and a former top aide to President Park Geun-hye on charges of abuse of power, coercion and perjury for their role in drafting a blacklist of dissenting artists, a spokesman said. The indictments are the latest twist in a corruption scandal that has gripped the country for months and led to the impeachment of Park by parliament in December. A Constitutional Court is reviewing the impeachment vote. If it is upheld, Park will have to leave office and a presidential election will be called. Lee Kyu-chul, spokesman for the special prosecutor's office investigating the scandal, told a briefing on Tuesday former culture minister Cho Yoon-sun, and a former presidential chief of staff, Kim Ki-choon, had been indicted. "The special prosecutor's office has...