Items tagged with SEC
The Bitcoin boom has generally gone bust, and as a result, we just don't hear as much about cryptocurrency as a major market mover as we used to. The value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies crashed last summer, leaving many investors hurting and lots of crypto mining rigs with expensive GPUs running idle and unused. The good news for gamers is that the crash of crypto meant graphics cards were finally available at reasonable prices. Further, a new report has been published today that throws more shade on the legitimacy of Bitcoin trading as a currency itself. The analysis was published by Bitwise this week and found that unregulated currency exchanges actually fake 95% of Bitcoin...
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Ethereum has taken a swift kick to the blockchain after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it has "dozens" of investigations open in the cryptocurrency space associated with ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). The announcement of the investigations was made by an agency official on March 15. The confirmation that the investigations have been opened comes after SEC Enforcement Division co-Director Stephanie Avakian announced in February that subpoenas had been sent to firms that were believed to have broken securities laws. SEC scrutiny of ICOs (initial coin offerings) has grown significantly since billions of dollars in digital assets were sold during 2017, many of which were...
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If we had a time machine, we go back to the early days of Bitcoin and invest heavily. On this day seven years ago, Bitcoin was worth around $0.24. That means a $100 investment would have gotten you around 417 Bitcoins worth nearly $7.1 million today. The numbers turn really obscene when you crunch the numbers for when Bitcoin was worth a fraction of a cent. But while hindsight is 20/20, Bitcoin continues to rise in value, drawing in investors from all corners. It's such a big deal that US Securities and Exchange (SEC) chairman Jay Clayton felt compelled to offer some words of warning. "A number of concerns have been raised regarding the cryptocurrency and ICO markets, including that, as they...
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Equifax may be now getting its public lashings for a cybersecurity breach that resulted in personal information of 143 million Americans being exposed to hackers, but it appears that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has a few skeletons in its closet as well. The regulatory agencies announced late last night that its EDGAR database was hacked last year. At the time, the SEC did not make any public disclosures regarding the hack, which took advantage of a vulnerability in the EDGAR test filing system. However, once it discovered the intrusion, it quickly patched it and went about its normal activities. However, in August 2017, the SEC noticed that the prior EDGAR infiltration might...
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With the boom of cryptocurrencies, many geeks have flocked to the virtual mining of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The boom in Ethereum mining recently was so massive that it was hard for gamers to find AMD Radeon graphics cards for gaming PCs because so many Ethereum speculators had gobbled up all the cards on the market. Even the co-founder of Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson, has said that cryptocurrency ICOs (initial coin offerings) are a "ticking time bomb." Part of the issue with these ICOs, which often drawn large sums of money very quickly, according to Hoskinson is that they are unregulated and sidestep safeguards required in traditional securities trading. Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of money-transfer...
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Yet another agency is looking into a fatal crash involving a 2015 Tesla Model S. The latest to don its detective cap is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is investigating whether Tesla ran afoul of securities regulations by not telling investors of the crash involving the company's self-driving car technology. The accident occurred in early May and took the life of Joshua Brown, the owner of the Model S that struck an 18-wheeler when the tractor trailer crossed in front of him on a divided highway. At the time of the accident, the vehicle's Autopilot mode was engaged. Unfortunately the sensors that detect the surroundings of the Model S failed to detect the 18-wheeler,...
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RadioShack is fast approaching a major hurdle in its long-running turnaround effort: it’s woefully short on cash. The company has been fighting declining sales with strategies that have left critics scratching their heads and was warned by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in July that its stock price was putting the company in danger of being delisted. In a public release today, RadioShack sounded the alarm: while it believes sales are trending up, it needs more cash for its long-term plans. RadioShack is working to turn itself around but needs cash. At least one analyst has predicted that bankruptcy is possibly in RadioShack’s near future. Pressured by the same...
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If you picture an HP executive as a straight-laced person in a conservative suit, it’s time to shake up that image, because three HP subsidiaries--in Russia, Poland, and Mexico--have spent years bribing government officials in those respective countries to snag lucrative contracts. "Hewlett-Packard subsidiaries created a slush fund for bribe payments...employed two sets of books to track bribe recipients, and used anonymous email accounts and prepaid mobile telephones to arrange covert meetings to hand over bags of cash," said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz in a statement. Securities and Exchange Commission (Credit: Wikipedia/AgnosticPreachersKid In Russia, the HP subsidiary...
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It's been 10 years since Microsoft and Nvidia colaborated on a console development project, but a clause in the agreement between the two companies could still have ramifications for the GPU manufacturer. The company's recent FY 2011 report with the SEC states: On March 5, 2000, we entered into an agreement with Microsoft in which we agreed to develop and sell graphics chips and to license certain technology to Microsoft and its licensees for use in the Xbox. Under the agreement, if an individual or corporation makes an offer to purchase shares equal to or greater than 30% of the outstanding shares of our common stock, Microsoft may have first and last rights of refusal to purchase...
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The collapse of Wall Street a few years back and the so-called Great Recession that followed were, it's generally agreed, pretty bad things. As investment banks began to fail and the Dow fell, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain how this had happened on its watch. It seems logical to think the top brass at the federal watchdog would have spent their time furiously searching for an explanation as to what had happened, while simultaneously trying to explain how they missed it. As it turns out, that's not quite true. The SEC recently completed an investigation into the web surfing habits of its employees and discovered that...
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Malware writers sobbed Tuesday as Microsoft announced that it will cease sales of its security product, Windows Live OneCare, as of June 30th, 2009. Instead, Microsoft announced that it would begin shipping a free product, codenamed "Morro," in the second half of 2009. The new offering will be less of a resource hog, according to the press release, which would obviously enable Microsoft to protect PCs in developing nations more effectively. In other words, they want to make sure they have some sort of product covering all the security holes in their OSes. But seriously, let's face it, the product never really gained a large market share, as it was buggy and performed poorly in various antivirus...
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The enterprising lads over at iFixit sure like to take stuff apart. Then again, that's at the heart of their bread-and-butter--they take the risks with potentially broken parts and lost screws so that they can assemble comprehensive DIY guides for instructing you how you can repair your own Apple products, such as MacBooks and iPods. If you don't know how to take it apart, how are you going to know to put it back together?Their latest disassembly was of the new "unibody" MacBook Pro that was unveiled only two days ago. Here are some highlight of what they discovered during their dissection: The removable battery Bottom plate removed The system board Dissected!(Credit:...
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Traditional antivirus (AV) testing, such as that done by organizations such as AV-test.org and AV-comparatives.org, uses collections of malware to demonstrate the capabilities of security products. Secunia, on the other hand, focuses on exploits. For example, it has a scanner at its site that will search your system for unpatched vulnerabilities in products such as Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, or Firefox. As Secunia's focus is on exploits, you might expect them to try to put AV solutjions to the test with exploits, rather than just already published malware, and that's what they did. They did a study (.PDF) by taking the following security suites: McAfee Internet Security Suite 2009Norton...
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Data breaches are becoming increasingly common and more sophisticated, putting consumers' personal information and financials at risk. Not only can these data breaches lead to identity theft, but some can even lead to money being siphoned out of bank accounts and illegal purchases made on credit cards. The responsibility for preventing these breaches falls on many shoulders, including merchants, consumers, and even Internet service providers (ISPs). Once such ISP, Verizon, recently analyzed "four years of data from over 500 cases worked by the Verizon Business Investigative Response team," to produce a report that gives an in-depth look into how data breaches are occurring in four major industry...
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