Month: March 2023

Zum Tod von Spiros Simitis: The Godfather of Datenschutz

Spiros Simitis, Wegbereiter des deutschen und europäischen Datenschutzes, ist gestorben. Was hätte er wohl zu den aktuellen Plänen gesagt, gigantische Mengen an Patientendaten der Wissenschaft zur Verfügung zu stellen? Ein Nachruf von Christiane Schulz…

Spiros Simitis, Wegbereiter des deutschen und europäischen Datenschutzes, ist gestorben. Was hätte er wohl zu den aktuellen Plänen gesagt, gigantische Mengen an Patientendaten der Wissenschaft zur Verfügung zu stellen? Ein Nachruf von Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti (Datenschutz, Politik)

SEC Charges Justin Sun, TRON & BitTorrent Companies With Fraud

Justin Sun, crypto entrepreneur and owner of the company formerly known as BitTorrent Inc., has been charged by the SEC for the unregistered sale of TRX and BTT securities and market manipulation. Three of Sun’s wholly owned companies, including uTorrent owner Rainberry Inc. have also been charged with fraud along with Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Ne-Yo and porn actress Kendra Lust.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

justinsun1After reporting on all things BitTorrent-related for the 13 years leading up to May 2018, TorrentFreak spotted something out of the ordinary.

BitTorrent Inc., the company founded by BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, and the owner of uTorrent, the world’s most recognized torrent client, suddenly had a new name. When asked about the change, Rainberry Inc. said it was a “corporate decision” not unlike the Alphabet/Google exercise.

Less than two weeks later, we were able to reveal that TRON founder Justin Sun was planning to buy BitTorrent Inc. Less than a month after that, Sun closed the deal with a reported offer of $140 million.

A shareholder quoted in a TechCrunch report revealed that one of Sun’s aims was to use the BitTorrent acquisition to “legitimize” TRON’s business.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission announcement published a few hours ago, the plan failed in at least one key area. Most likely, many, many more.

Fraud: SEC Charges Justin Sun and Three Wholly-Owned Companies

Claims that the SEC had already opened an investigation into Sun’s business activities have been around for a long time. An extraordinary article written by Christopher Harland-Dunaway and published by The Verge last year left very little doubt.

In an announcement Wednesday, the SEC revealed charges against Justin Sun and three of his wholly-owned companies – Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. (formerly BitTorrent Inc.) – for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT).

Sun and his companies were further charged with fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading, described by the SEC as “simultaneous or near-simultaneous purchase and sale of a security to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership.”

Alleged Crypto-Shill Celebrities

The SEC also charged eight celebrities for promoting TRX and/or BTT without disclosing they were being paid to do so.

Actress Lindsay Lohan, YouTuber/Boxer Jake Paul, DeAndre Cortez Way (Soulja Boy), and singer/songwriter Austin Mahone, are joined by porn actress Michele Mason (aka Kendra Lust), Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty), Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo) and Aliaune Thiam (Akon) on the SEC’s list.

Sun’s personal promotion site before it went offline (hejustinsun.com)crypto-diplomat

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Sun and his companies sold TRX and BTT as investments via unregistered “bounty programs” that saw partners promote the tokens on social media while recruiting others to join Tron-affiliated Telegram and Discord channels.

Sun, BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry reportedly sold BTT in unregistered monthly airdrops to investors who purchased and held TRX in Tron wallets or on other crypto trading platforms. The SEC says that every offer and sale violated Section 5 of the Securities Act.

Fraud and Market Manipulation

The SEC alleges that Sun was also the architect of a scheme that sought to artificially inflate the volume of TRX on the secondary market.

During a 10-month period 2018/2019, Sun allegedly directed his employees “to engage in more than 600,000 wash trades of TRX between two crypto asset trading platform accounts [Sun] controlled, with between 4.5 million and 7.4 million TRX wash traded daily.”

Sun’s personal promotion site today (hejustinsun.com)messeduphomepage

Sun is said to have supplied a significant amount of TRX to facilitate the scheme while also selling TRX into the secondary market himself. These “illegal, unregistered offers and sales” reportedly generated $31 million.

Sun’s Stunts Slammed by SEC

“While we’re neutral about the technologies at issue, we’re anything but neutral when it comes to investor protection,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

“As alleged in the complaint, Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors by first offering securities without complying with registration and disclosure requirements and then manipulating the market for those very securities.

“At the same time, Sun paid celebrities with millions of social media followers to tout the unregistered offerings, while specifically directing that they not disclose their compensation.”

According to the SEC, six of those celebrities have already paid their way out. Lohan, Paul, Lust, McCollum, Smith, and Thiam agreed to hand over a combined $400,000 in settlements for their alleged roles in a magic bean business we called out almost four years ago.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Released: Command execution exploit for Netgear Orbi routers. Are you patched?

The threat is serious enough to warrant a manual check ASAP.

An Orbi 750 series router.

Enlarge / An Orbi 750 series router. (credit: Netgear)

If you rely on Netgear’s Orbi mesh wireless system to connect to the Internet, you’ll want to ensure it’s running the latest firmware now that exploit code has been released for critical vulnerabilities in older versions.

The Orbi Satellite RBS750 comprises a main hub router and one or more satellite routers that extend the network’s range. By setting up multiple access points in a home or office, they form a mesh system that ensures Wi-Fi coverage is available throughout.

Remotely injecting arbitrary commands

Last year, researchers on Cisco’s Talos security team discovered four vulnerabilities and privately reported them to Netgear. The most severe of the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2022-37337, resides in the access control functionality of the RBR750. Hackers can exploit it to remotely execute commands by sending specially crafted HTTP requests to the device. The hacker must first connect to the device, either by knowing the SSID password or by accessing an unprotected SSID. The severity of the flaw is rated 9.1 out of a possible 10.

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Moderna CEO brazenly defends 400% COVID shot price hike, downplays NIH’s role

Sen. Sanders accused the company of an “unprecedented level of corporate greed.”

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 22 in Washington, DC.

Enlarge / Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 22 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Chip Somodevilla)

In Congressional testimony Wednesday, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel unabashedly defended the company's plans to raise the US list price of its COVID-19 vaccines by more than 400 percent—despite creating the vaccine in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, receiving $1.7 billion in federal grant money for clinical development, and making roughly $36 billion from worldwide sales.

Bancel appeared this morning before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has long railed at the pharmaceutical price gouging in the US and pushed from policy reforms. After thanking Bancel for agreeing to testify, Sanders didn't pull any punches. He accused Moderna of "profiteering" and sharing in the "unprecedented level of corporate greed" seen in the pharmaceutical industry generally.

Sanders contrasted a recent survey finding that 37 percent of Americans can't afford their prescription drugs to the billions of dollars in profits reaped by drug companies. He noted several times that Bancel became a billionaire overnight amid the pandemic. Bancel is now estimated to be worth over $4 billion, Sanders added.

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Lilbits: iKoolCore R1 (tiny PC with four 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports), Mozilla’s plans for “trustworthy AI,” and Amazon Luna game streaming expands to more countries

Virtually every major tech company seems to be jumping into the AI space… despite mounting evidence that the current models aren’t very good at distinguishing fact from fiction and could lead to even more disinformation on the internet. Bu…

Virtually every major tech company seems to be jumping into the AI space… despite mounting evidence that the current models aren’t very good at distinguishing fact from fiction and could lead to even more disinformation on the internet. But while those for-profit companies are busy treating the public like beta testers, Mozilla is launching an initiative that […]

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