BlackBerry joined the National Cyber Security Alliance as a board member, the group said in a Wednesday announcement. The alliance described itself as a nonprofit public-private partnership focused on helping “digital citizens stay safer and more secure online.” Consumers and businesses “increasingly rely on mobile technology, but they may not fully understand the security and privacy considerations that come with untethered, unlimited access to information," the alliance said. BlackBerry brings a “unique perspective” to the alliance, it said. Other tech companies that sit on the alliance board include AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Symantec and Verizon, it said.

Intel and Wipro are the latest members to join the International M2M Council, an association that promotes IoT adoption, the group said in a Tuesday announcement. The council, which now boasts more than 10,000 members, is “comprised almost entirely” of OEMs, enterprise users and app developers whose aims are “to boost understanding and sales in IoT,” the group said.

Twitter is adding trademark notices and email privacy practices to its biannual transparency report, which covers government requests and copyright notices, the company said in a blog post Tuesday. Twitter said "foundational" sections of the report -- including law enforcement requests for account information, government requests for content removal, and copyright takedown notices and counter notices -- have been updated with request data covering Jan. 1, 2015, to June 30, 2015. Government requests for account information increased 52 percent since the last report, the company said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released its Do Not Track (DNT) policy to promote service provider compliance and user privacy, EFF said in a blog post Monday. The new policy is the "logical engine" behind the group's free anti-tracker plug-in for Firefox and Chrome called Privacy Badger (see 1508060043 and 1508040019), EFF said. "When a user turns on DNT... compliant service providers agree to turn off much of their tracking capabilities," the blog post said. "Our policy explains how those service providers should act." EFF said the policy "strikes a balance between user privacy and the needs of data service operators" and that Privacy Badger will seek to enforce DNT's principles if companies don't respect them. Companies voluntarily support DNT, said EFF, but once they promise to abide by its conditions, "they can be held to the promise by law." The policy protects users' reading habits and browsing history, and includes exceptions to "accommodate the everyday practicalities of the Web," EFF said.

The California Legislature’s AB-1326, which would require “virtual currency businesses” to obtain a license to offer services in California, “is so vague that it’s unclear what companies are, in fact, ‘virtual currency businesses,’” which “threatens the future of virtual currency experimentation and innovation in the state,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation Activism Director Rainey Reitman in a blog post Friday. EFF has been working to get changes it feels will improve the bill but the likelihood that the measure will move forward in the coming weeks means “the time for conversation is over,” she said. EFF is now “urging concerned Californians to speak out against this legislation by calling, emailing, and tweeting at their state elected officials immediately,” Reitman said. EFF believes the bill is premature because the digital currency market is “in its infancy” and that attempting to regulate digital currency services at the state level will create confusion, she said. The office of Assembly Banking and Finance Committee Chairman Matt Dababneh, a Democrat who sponsored AB-1326, didn't comment.

NTIA urged Internet governance stakeholders to file comments with ICANN on proposals for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and ICANN accountability. The agency said in Monday’s Federal Register that those comments will help it “determine whether the proposals satisfy NTIA’s criteria and have received broad community support. Comments will also be considered in any NTIA certification before the U.S. Congress that may be required prior to terminating the existing IANA functions contract currently in place between NTIA and ICANN.” ICANN’s IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) released a combined version of earlier community IANA transition proposals in late July (see 1507310060), while the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) released its proposal last week (see 1508040058). Comments on the ICG proposal are due Sept. 8, and comments on the CCWG-Accountability proposal are due Sept. 12, NTIA said.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) urged the FTC in comments filed with the commission last week, to support the sharing economy by taking a light-handed regulatory approach and fighting "anti-competitive laws" tailored to incumbent businesses. The comments are among nearly 2,000 filings submitted to the FTC in response to its June workshop on various issues raised by the sharing economy (see 1508050043). The FTC should launch an effort "to use its authority to provide continuous oversight of anticompetitive regulations that impede innovation in the market" by identifying policies that limit the sharing economy and recommending changes "to ensure that competition in the sharing economy flourishes," ITIF said.

Passwords stored in Microsoft’s Group Policy Preferences may be insecurely stored due to incomplete implementations of Microsoft Security Bulletin MS14-025, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in an alert Friday. U.S.-CERT said that if administrators haven’t cleared previously stored passwords, the system may be vulnerable to exploitation. Attackers “may decrypt these passwords and use them to gain escalated privileges,” the alert said. U.S.-CERT recommends administrators employ the PowerShell script provided in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 2962486 and follow the instructions to clear all “CPassword” preferences.

The Mozilla Foundation released security updates to address a critical vulnerability in the built-in PDF Viewer for Firefox and Firefox ESR, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in an alert Thursday. U.S.-CERT said that exploiting the vulnerability may allow attackers to read and steal sensitive local files on the victim’s computer. Updates to Firefox are available, and U.S.-CERT recommends users and administrators apply necessary updates.

Several major Republican presidential candidates spent time during a Fox News debate Thursday criticizing recent Chinese and Russian cyberattacks against U.S. federal agencies, with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blaming Russia for a July data breach that hit the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s email system. Reports on the breach began surfacing in the hours before the Fox News debate. The Department of Defense didn’t comment on the attack’s origin. Cruz also went after China, saying that nation’s government is “waging cyber warfare against America.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker referenced attacks attributed to Russia and China, saying the two nations’ governments “know more” about emails stored on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state “than does our U.S. Congress, and that’s put our national security at risk.”