The most dangerous part about killing Dodd-Frank

Less than nine years after the Wall Street meltdown, the House of Representatives has voted in favor of gutting the post-crisis Dodd-Frank rules placed on big banks.

While the Financial Choice Act is likely dead on arrival in the Senate, some parts of the legislation may end up surviving. read more »

The Ether Thief

A year ago a hacker sole $55 million of a virtual currency known as ether. This is the story of the bold attempt to rewrite that history

This is the story of one of the largest digital heists in history. And while you may have heard last year that hackers breached Swift, the bank-to-bank messaging system, and stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank, the DAO attack is in a different category altogether. It played out in front of anyone who cared to watch and couldn’t be stopped. Just as the global WannaCry ransomware attack in May laid bare weaknesses in computer operating systems, the DAO hack exposed the early frailties of smart-contract security and left many in the community shaken because they hadn’t found the bug in time. The aftermath would eventually pit good hackers against bad ones—the white hats vs. the black hats—in the strange and futuristic-sounding DAO Wars. read more »

Fujifilm-Xerox Venture Ousts Executives Over Accounting Trouble

Fuji Xerox, the Japan-based joint venture between Xerox and Fujifilm Holdings, said on Monday that its chairman and three other executives were stepping down over accounting problems discovered at its operations in Australia and New Zealand.

A whistle-blower inside Fuji Xerox, whose name has not been released, initially identified problems at the New Zealand unit in 2015. Fujifilm first disclosed the investigation in April, saying it was investigating what it believed then to be a ¥22 billion accounting discrepancy. In a report delivered on Saturday, the investigating committee said it had also discovered problems in Australia, Fujifilm said on Monday. read more »

Latvian Cybercriminal Extradited For "Scareware" Hacking Scheme That Caused Millions of Dollars in Loss

A Latvian man made his initial appearance today in Minneapolis following extradition from Poland for his involvement in a “scareware” hacking scheme that targeted the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s website and caused millions of dollars in losses to Internet users.

Scareware is a type of malicious software, or malware, that poses as legitimate computer security software and purports to detect a variety of threats on the affected computer that do not actually exist. Computer users are informed they must purchase what they are told is anti-virus software in order to repair their computers. The users are then barraged with aggressive and disruptive notifications – and sometimes prevented from using their computer – until they supply their credit card number and pay for a fraudulent “anti-virus” product. read more »

US watchdog watches for corruption in Korean pharmaceuticals

The criminal and civil charges brought against Novartis Korea have directed U.S. federal agencies’ attention to the Korean pharmaceutical industry.

And the increased focus by the U.S. officials is not good news for pharmaceutical companies operating in Korea, local and foreign, which are now on the radar of three U.S. federal agencies that monitor the world for corruption and bribery.

The three U.S. federal agencies – Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Office of Foreign Assets Control – have begun to focus on Korea with their “expansive view of jurisdiction. read more »