An investor group of six venture capitalists will buy McAfee for more than $14 billion and take it private, said the cybersecurity vendor Monday. The $26 a share purchase price is a 22.6% premium over McAfee’s $21.21 closing share price Thursday, the last trading day before media reports surfaced about a potential sale, it said. McAfee went public last year as a pure-play consumer cybersecurity company, with Intel and TPG among its key shareholders. The McAfee board approved the transaction, which is expected to close in 2022's first half. McAfee canceled its Tuesday Q3 earnings call. Revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 25 grew 24% to $491 million, said McAfee.
A 22-year-old Ukrainian national was arrested and charged with the ransomware attack on Kaseya (see 2109210055), DOJ announced Monday. Authorities seized $6.1 million linked to alleged ransomware attackers, the department said. An indictment unsealed Monday charged Yaroslav Vasinskyi with “conducting ransomware attacks against multiple victims, including the July 2021 attack against Kaseya.” Officials traced the alleged payments to Yevgeniy Polyanin, a 28-year-old Russian national, who was “charged with conducting Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware attacks against multiple victims” in Texas in 2019, DOJ said. The department credited Ukrainian authorities for assisting with the efforts.
Bosch representatives spoke with staff in the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology about possible conditions on a waiver the company seeks of FCC ultra-wideband rules for its Wallscanner D-Tect 200 wall imaging system (see 2008200030). “Bosch reviewed the procedural history of the waiver request, including prior meetings with both the Commission” and the NTIA, said a filing posted Friday in docket 20-268: “In response to questions from OET staff, the Bosch representatives described the technical and operating parameters and the use cases.”
Mobile device and wearables are having a “massive uptake” of ultra-wideband technology, said ABI Research Thursday, forecasting UWB shipments of 1.3 billion by 2026, from 143 million last year. Apple was one of the first to adopt UWB in the iPhone 11 and Watch 6, and it's now in products from Samsung, Xiaomi and Honor, with “many more” vendors set to follow, said analyst Filomena Iovino. ABI forecasts 14% of smartphones will have UWB by year-end, expanding to 40% by 2026: Challenges include the large antenna.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will add four companies in Israel, Russia and Singapore to the entity list for "malicious cyber activities" contrary to U.S. foreign policy and national security, BIS said; see also a State Department announcement. The two Israeli companies that include NSO Group supply malicious spyware to foreign governments, and the companies in Russia and Singapore “traffic in cyber exploits” that threaten the “privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.” BIS' parent agency the Commerce Department said these additions -- which take effect Thursday, when they're to be published in the Federal Register -- reflect a government-wide effort to "stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression." Adding NSO and others is "long overdue," Access Now said. It said the EU and other governments "should implement similar restrictions on surveillance tech companies who facilitate human rights violations. The privacy advocacy group wants the U.S. government to sanction owners and affiliates of NSO Group and Candiru, another company that's being added to the BIS list. NSO "is dismayed by" BIS' decision because "our technologies support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime," emailed a company spokesperson. "We will advocate for this decision to be reversed.”
Facebook is “shutting down” its face scanning system, Vice President-AI Jerome Pesenti announced Tuesday “as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products.” Users who opted into the technology won’t be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and Facebook will “delete more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates,” he said. That includes more than a third of the platform's users. “We need to weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules,” he said.
Comments are due Dec. 16 for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s effort to label consumer software to improve cybersecurity. The program responds to President Joe Biden’s May executive order. NIST plans to release a final version by Feb. 6 and sought input in an email Monday.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the American Civil Liberties Union’s case seeking access to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) documents, on docket 20-1499. The ACLU argued the First Amendment provides a “qualified right of public access” to the court’s “significant opinions” on statutory and constitutional law. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. The FISC and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) denied the ACLU access to secret opinions authorizing surveillance on U.S. citizens in 2016. The ACLU asked the high court to review a series of rulings denying access. The case presents questions about the “right of public access to Article III judicial proceedings of grave national importance,” Gorsuch wrote in the dissenting opinion Monday with Sotomayor. “Maybe even more fundamentally, this case involves a governmental challenge to the power of this Court to review the work of Article III judges in a subordinate court. If these matters are not worthy of our time, what is?” The high court failed to “bring badly needed transparency to the surveillance court and to rulings that impact millions of Americans,” ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Patrick Toomey said . “Our privacy rights rise or fall with the court’s decisions, which increasingly apply outdated laws to the new technologies we rely on.” Because SCOTUS “refuses to let the American people see how their own constitutional rights are being interpreted, Congress’s responsibility to conduct aggressive oversight and end secret law is even more important,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to have tech groups’ lawsuit against the state’s social media law dismissed is “meritless,” said the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice in a filing Thursday in docket 1:21-cv-00840 (see 2110270031). Supreme Court and 5th Circuit precedent allow associations to sue on behalf of members when members are subject to state regulation, the associations argued. Paxton (R) attempted to have the case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction earlier this month. The law in question would require members to “spend significant time and money overhauling their content-moderation policies and proprietary computer programs, both of which have taken years to develop with substantial resources,” the associations said. Paxton’s office didn’t comment Friday.
The FTC’s rule for promoting public participation in the rulemaking process takes effect Friday (see 2109150061), the agency says in that day's Federal Register: The changes provide “increased transparency” and “greater guidance” for the public when filing petitions.