Author: TechBrunch

Japanese consumer electronics giant Casio has confirmed that the personal data of approximately 8,500 people was stolen in a ransomware attack in October. Casio was the target of a ransomware attack on October 5th, in which hackers accessed sensitive data and rendered many of the company's systems unusable. The attack was carried out by the Underground ransomware group, which claimed to have stolen over 200 gigabytes of data from Casio's systems, according to a dark web post seen by TechCrunch. In an update posted on Tuesday, Casio said a hacker group that security experts associate with the Russia-linked cybercrime group…

The United Nations aviation agency has confirmed that hackers accessed thousands of records after breaching its internal recruitment database. Last weekend, an individual using the alias “Natohub” claimed to have accessed 42,000 documents from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The agency announced on Monday that it was investigating the incident and confirmed Natohub's claims in an updated statement sent to TechCrunch on Tuesday. “ICAO said the reported information security incident involved approximately 42,000 job application data records from April 2016 to July 2024 that were allegedly exposed by a threat actor known as Natohub. I was able to confirm…

Microsoft announced a series of wide-ranging artificial intelligence partnerships in core areas in India on Wednesday, a day after pledging to invest $3 billion over the next two years in the country as competition from rivals Google and Amazon intensifies. The tech giant's chief executive, Satya Nadella (pictured above), announced agreements with five major organizations spanning rail, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and education. This includes an agreement with India's Ministry of Electronics and IT, as part of which Microsoft will contribute to the ministry's IndiaAI Mission Datasets platform by supporting data collection and synthetic generation. The company also plans to…

January 8th 9:30am Dubai VC investment in emerging markets such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has plummeted by more than 40% compared to 2023, according to a new report. This data reflects a broader global trend of declining VC funding, particularly in non-AI companies, over the past two years. Total funding across surveyed markets in 2024 was $9.1 billion, down 41% year-over-year (YoY). Furthermore, trading activity decreased by 20% year-over-year, with the number of transactions falling to 1,527. However, while early-stage investments are showing resilience, lower interest rates globally and the associated fall in inflation could soon…

Some Indian government websites continue to allow fraudulent links to be planted to official domains, even months after TechCrunch reported the issue. TechCrunch reports that more than 90 “gov.in'' website links related to Indian government departments, including the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the Indian Post Office, state governments such as Haryana and Maharashtra, and the Parliament, have been linked online. I discovered that I was being redirected to a site with Gambling and investment fraud. Search engines such as Google index fraudulent links hosted on government sites, increasing the risk that regular internet users will find them. Some search…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday responded to sexual assault accusations from his estranged sister, calling the claims “completely false.” In a new lawsuit filed Monday, Annie Altman alleges that her brother sexually assaulted her over a nine-year period in the 1990s and 2000s, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The lawsuit echoes claims Annie made earlier on social media in 2021. Sam Altman acknowledged the lawsuit in an X post on Tuesday and responded with statements from his brothers Max and Jack and mother Connie. The Altman family maintains that the allegations in the lawsuit are false. They wrote…

In recent years, Delta Air Lines has become a fixture at CES, regularly hosting splashy keynotes. This year, the company loaned out Sphere to announce its latest update. These include an in-app AI-powered assistant and a modern in-flight entertainment system with a 4K HDR display and Bluetooth connectivity (get the idea?). Members of Delta Air Lines' SkyMiles frequent flyer program will also soon have free access to YouTube Premium and YouTube Music on the airline's aircraft. Delta announced these updates at CES 2025. The new AI assistant, which Delta Air Lines is calling “Delta Concierge,” will be introduced later this…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the performance of his company's AI chips is advancing faster than the historical rate set by Moore's Law, which has driven advances in computing for decades. states. “Our systems are advancing much faster than Moore's Law,” Huang said in an interview with TechCrunch the morning after his keynote speech to a crowd of 10,000 people at CES in Las Vegas. He spoke at Moore's Law, proposed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, predicts that the number of transistors on computer chips will approximately double each year, effectively doubling the performance of those chips. did.…

Despite all the talk about San Francisco's decline, data repeatedly shows that the Bay Area, including the city itself, remains the best location for venture-backed startups. Bay Area startups siphoned off $90 billion in VC investment in 2024, representing 57% of the $178 billion in global venture capital spent last year, according to new statistics released by Crunchbase on Tuesday. do. In 2024, San Francisco-headquartered OpenAI was clearly the mother ship in spawning a nearby AI startup industry, both with its own deep-pocketed startup capital and the VC money it raised itself. But others include San Francisco's Databricks and its…

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing arm, said Tuesday it plans to invest “at least” $11 billion in Georgia to expand infrastructure to support various cloud computing and AI technologies. Announced. AWS estimates its investment will create approximately 550 jobs in the state. “AWS is proud to expand our operations in Georgia to help advance the next generation of cutting-edge technologies such as AI,” the company said in a press release. “We are grateful to state and local leaders for partnering with us and look forward to continuing to keep Georgia at the cutting edge of the digital age.”…