Author: TechBrunch
Cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike confirmed last month that it had fired a “suspicious insider” who allegedly provided information about the company to a notorious hacking group. A hacking collective known as Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters published screenshots on a public Telegram channel late Thursday and early Friday morning that showed insider access to CrowdStrike systems. A screenshot seen by TechCrunch shows a dashboard with links to company resources, including the user Okta dashboard that employees use to access internal apps. The hackers claimed on their Telegram channel that CrowdStrike was compromised by a recent breach at Gainsight, a customer relationship management company…
Google has admitted that hackers stole more than 200 companies' data stored in Salesforce in a massive supply chain hack. Salesforce said Thursday that “Salesforce data for certain customers” had been compromised, although it did not name the affected companies. The data was stolen through an app published by Gainsight, which provides a customer support platform for other companies. Austin Larsen, principal threat analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said in a statement that the company is “aware of over 200 Salesforce instances that may be affected.” After Salesforce announced the breach, a notorious and somewhat obscure hacking group known…
The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 along party lines Thursday to repeal a rule requiring major U.S. phone and internet companies to meet certain minimum cybersecurity requirements. Two Trump-appointed FCC commissioners, Chairman Brendan Carr and his Republican colleague Olivia Trustee, voted in favor of repealing a rule requiring telecommunications carriers to “protect their networks from unlawful access and interception.” The Biden administration adopted these rules before leaving office earlier this year. Anna Gomez, the FCC's only Democratic commissioner, opposed it. In a statement after the vote, Gomez said the overturned rule was “the only meaningful effort this agency has taken”…
People in Silicon Valley tend to dismiss the startup market across the pond as too small or not hungry enough, a sentiment not unlike how Europeans view their potential. This year's annual Slush conference in Helsinki showed a venture market that feels on the brink of transformation, poised for the first trillion-dollar startups. Founders, venture investors and government officials alike acknowledged the obstacles that have traditionally prevented Europe from reaching its true size and potential. For years, European founders have moved to the United States to start their companies or exited earlier than necessary because they operated in markets lacking…
Salesforce announced Wednesday that it is investigating a breach of “Salesforce data for certain customers” through an app published by Gainsight, which sells a platform for other companies to manage their customers. In a notice published late Wednesday, Salesforce said the hack involved “Gainsight published applications connected to Salesforce that are installed and managed directly by customers.” Salesforce said there is “no indication that this issue is due to a vulnerability in the Salesforce platform” and that the activity appears to be related to Gainsight's “external connections to Salesforce.” When asked for comment, Salesforce spokesperson Nicole Aranda directed TechCrunch to…
Shernaz Dever may be small in stature, but big in influence. Over 30 years in Silicon Valley, she has mastered the art of calling anyone with a simple text: “Can I call you?” or “Let's talk tomorrow” and they do. Now, as he prepares to leave Khosla Ventures (KV) after nearly five years as the company's first CMO, Dever could be an indicator of where the tech industry is headed. Her career has been an incredibly accurate barometer of what's next in the industry. She was at Inktomi during the search wars of the late '90s (the dot-com high-flyer reached…
The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused content monetization startup Curastory of inflating its revenue to investors and misrepresenting its true number of customers, according to documents reviewed by TechCrunch. As a result of the SEC settlement, Curastory founder and CEO Tiffany Kelly has resigned from her position and been replaced by Dave Dickman, former CEO of influencer marketing platform Tagger. Under Dickman's leadership, the company has begun raising capital, international expansion plans and product updates, Kelly and Dickman told TechCrunch. The settlement agreement stipulates that Mr. Kelly will be prohibited from serving on the board or officer of any…
The year is 2030. A “notorious mystery hacker” known as Puppet Master is wreaking havoc on the Internet, infiltrating the so-called cyber brains of several humans and “every device on the network.” After all, Puppet Master is a creation of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In other words, Puppet Master is what we would today call a government-sponsored hacker, or Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). However, in this case, the “mysterious'' hacker has become the villain, wanted on charges of “stock price manipulation, espionage, political manipulation, terrorism, and cyber brain privacy violation.'' That's the basic premise of the Japanese cult classic…
January Ventures co-founder Jennifer Neundorfer stopped by the Equity podcast during TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about raising money in this very AI-driven market. Founders and investors alike are excited about AI, and even Neundorfer said her company is looking at ways to use AI to make its work more efficient, such as helping with market and competitive due diligence. When it comes to companies that are starting up, I prefer founders who want to create something entirely new. “What excites me is when I see someone using AI to do something that’s not 10 times better, because it’s actually creating…
If you want to know how worried venture capitalists (and Silicon Valley in general) are about legal challenges to AI training using copyrighted material, look no further than the AI music site Suno. Suno, which allows anyone to create AI-generated songs through prompts, announced Wednesday that it has raised $250 million in a Series C round at a post-money valuation of $2.45 billion. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Nvidia's venture arm NVentures, as well as Hallwood Media, Lightspeed, and Matrix. The company offers monthly subscriptions for consumers (a free tier plus $8 or $24 monthly…