SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A Facebook Inc shareholder filed a proposed class action lawsuit on Friday in a bid to stop the company's plan to issue new Class C stock, calling the move a “patent attempt” to entrench chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as controlling shareholder.
Facebook Inc's quarterly revenue rose more than 50 percent, handily beating Wall Street expectations as its wildly popular mobile app and a push into live video lured new advertisers and encouraged existing ones to boost spending. Facebook also announced it will create a new class of non-voting shares in a move aimed at letting Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg give away his wealth without relinquishing control of the social media juggernaut he founded. The company plans to create a new class of non-voting shares, which would be given as a dividend to existing shareholders.
Apple also said it was raising its capital return program by $50 billion through a $35 billion increase in its share buyback authorization and a 10 percent rise in the quarterly dividend. Apple said it sold 51.2 million iPhones in its second fiscal quarter, down from 61.2 million in the same quarter a year ago but above analysts' estimates of about 50 million devices. Shares of Apple fell 6 percent on heavy volume in after-hours trade, falling below $100 for the first time since February.
The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems. SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT would release on Monday a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures.
(Reuters) – Verizon Communications Inc said an attacker had exploited a security vulnerability on its enterprise client portal to steal contact information of a number of customers. The company said the attacker however did not gain access to Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) or other data. Krebs On Security, which first broke the news of the breach, said a member of a underground cybercrime forum had posted a new thread advertising the sale of a database containing the contact information on some 1.5 million customers of Verizon Enterprise.
Israel's Cellebrite, a provider of mobile forensic software, is helping the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's attempt to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California shooters, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Wednesday. If Cellebrite succeeds, then the FBI will no longer need the help of Apple Inc , the Israeli daily said, citing unnamed industry sources. Apple is engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department over a judge's order that it write new software to disable passcode protection on the iPhone used by the shooter.
U.S. prosecutors said Monday that a “third party” had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, a development that could bring an abrupt end to the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple Inc. A federal judge in Riverside, California, late Monday agreed to the government's request to postpone a hearing scheduled for Tuesday so that prosecutors could try the newly discovered technique. The Justice Department said it would update the court on April 5. The government had insisted until Monday that it had no way to access the phone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the two killers in the December massacre in San Bernardino, California, except to force Apple to write new software that would disable the password protection.
By Matthew Miller and Paul Carsten BEIJING (Reuters) – Facebook's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met China's propaganda tsar Liu Yunshan in Beijing on Saturday as part of a charm offensive in one of the few markets where the social network cannot be accessed. The rare meeting, reported by China's state news agency Xinhua, suggests warming relations between Facebook and the Chinese government, even as Beijing steps up censorship of and control over the Internet.
By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government and Apple Inc will be able to cross-examine the other's witnesses in a court hearing next week on whether the technology company must help federal investigators unlock an encrypted iPhone tied to one of the San Bernardino killers, Apple said. The hearing, set for Tuesday, is the latest development in a showdown between Apple and the government that has become a lightning rod in the national debate over digital privacy and what kind of data on phones and personal devices should be accessible to law enforcement. All the witnesses have given written declarations in the legal briefs already filed in the case, said an Apple lawyer who spoke to reporters on a conference call on Friday, on condition of anonymity.
A German court has ruled against Apple Inc in a case over video streaming patents, handing Kudelski's OpenTV unit a victory in its ongoing intellectual property licensing campaign against major technology companies. OpenTV sued Apple in 2014, alleging that various products infringe its patents, including the iPhone and iPad. The ruling on Tuesday from the Dusseldorf District Court said Apple products sold in Germany must not use streaming software which infringes OpenTV's patents.