Month: October 2019

A New Jersey man has admitted he installed keyloggers and laptops on the networks of two companies and used them to steal data related to an emerging technology they were using.

According to documents filed in US District Court for New Jersey, Ankur Agarwal, 45, of Montville, New Jersey, physically trespassed on the properties of both companies. He then installed hardware-based keyloggers that recorded the usernames and passwords of the companies’ employees. He also installed laptops in the companies’ networks that he used to remotely access the compromised employee accounts. Agarwal also used his unauthorized access at one of the companies to create a fraudulent employee badge that allowed him continued access to the company’s premises.

The New Jersey man created a programming script designed to exfiltrate data. He used it against multiple computers to steal more than 15,000 files relating to the companies’ emerging data, human resources data, employees’ personal information, and email. Among the multiple employees who were targeted were a chief network engineer officer and a network engineer. The crimes began in February 2017 and came to an end around April 2018, when network security employees for one of the companies detected the intrusion and began an investigation.

Enlarge / The 13.5-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 3. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

Microsoft beat analyst expectations in its quarterly earnings report, achieving $33.06 billion in revenue in the start of its first 2020 fiscal quarter (which ended September 30) compared to a projected $32.23 billion.

That's a 14% increase over the same quarter the prior year. Much of the growth still came from Azure, the company's ever-expanding cloud-services platform, which saw 59% revenue growth. However, that's down just a little from the previous quarter, which saw 64% growth. Azure and other cloud services saw $10.85 billion in revenue.

That's not what disappointed analysts and investors. Most expected a similar figure as Azure's growth slows down quarter-by-quarter and it achieves greater market saturation. (Amazon's more popular AWS has seen slowing growth lately, too).

Enlarge / The crew module of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is lifted onto its service module on Oct. 16 inside the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (credit: Boeing)

On Thursday, NASA invited media to the launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The news release included a launch date for the mission: December 17.

This uncrewed test flight will validate the in-flight capabilities of the Starliner vehicle and the Atlas V rocket that will launch it into orbit. This mission is a precursor to human flights on Starliner, which NASA has paid Boeing to develop for astronaut transport to the International Space Station.

NASA's invitation is notable because Boeing's "Orbital Flight Test-1" notional launch date has slipped several times, and generally NASA only sends a request for press credentials when it is fairly confident in a launch date. A source said some uncertainty remains in the date, but confidence will increase if Boeing succeeds in moving a fueled Starliner from its facility at Kennedy Space Center to United Launch Alliance's facility in mid-November. During this procedure, the spacecraft will be stacked atop an Atlas V rocket for final processing ahead of the launch.

Enlarge / An AT&T sign outside a company office in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | Roberto Machado Noa )

A lawsuit against AT&T alleges that the carrier's employees helped hackers perform SIM-swap attacks on a customer and rob him of $1.8 million worth of cryptocurrency.

Plaintiff Seth Shapiro of Torrance, California, says that AT&T is liable for the acts of its employees and failed to implement systems and procedures to prevent them from pulling off the scheme. The complaint, filed on October 17 in US District Court for the Central District of California, says:

On at least four occasions between May 16, 2018 and May 18, 2019, AT&T employees obtained unauthorized access to Mr. Shapiro's AT&T wireless account, viewed his confidential and proprietary personal information, and transferred control over Mr. Shapiro's AT&T wireless number from Mr. Shapiro's phone to a phone controlled by third-party hackers in exchange for money. The hackers then utilized their control over Mr. Shapiro's AT&T wireless number—including control secured through cooperation with AT&T employees—to access his personal and digital finance accounts and steal more than $1.8 million from Mr. Shapiro.

In a SIM-swap attack, "the SIM card associated with the victim's wireless account is switched from the victim's phone" to someone else's, which "effectively moves the victim's wireless phone—including any incoming data, texts, and phone calls associated with the victim's phone—from their phone to a phone controlled by the third party," the lawsuit notes.