President Joe Biden will nominate Chris Inglis, a former NSA deputy director, to be national cyber director, the White House announced Monday. He plans to nominate former NSA intelligence officer Jen Easterly to be director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Comments are due May 29 on the FTC’s April 29 workshop on digital "dark patterns," said the agency Friday (see 2102240045). It seeks comments on definitions of dark patterns and their marketplace prevalence, plus their harms and mitigation and their influence on consumers. The workshop will discuss dark patterns as "a range of potentially deceptive or unfair user interface designs used on websites and mobile apps," said the agency.

Facebook unlawfully maintained a monopoly through exclusionary conduct in violation of antitrust law, alleged New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and a bipartisan group of AGs Thursday in response to Facebook’s motion (in Pacer) to dismiss their lawsuit. “Facebook has successfully squashed, suppressed, and deterred competition, harming millions of consumers and small businesses with its illegal behavior,” said James. “Facebook’s scheme of predatory acquisitions and exclusionary conduct entrenches its monopoly power.” The states failed to “plausibly allege” Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp violated the Clayton Act, the company argued in its motion to dismiss. The AGs failed to show Instagram and WhatsApp were “uniquely situated to compete with Facebook,” the platform argued.

Computer malware detections were down over 43% year on year in 2020, partly due to work-from-home trends, said Rick Meder, solutions architect at SonicWall, at a Home Technology Specialists of America session, referencing the company’s annual cyberthreat report. But remote desktop protocol attacks soared from just over one per day worldwide in January 2020 to eight attacks per second in September, Meder said Monday. IoT malware detections grew over 66% last year globally and 152% in North America, said Meder. Cryptojacking is at a three-year high, up over 300% from 2019, he said. A widely publicized $50 million ransomware attack on Acer last month was the largest known to date, he said. The 66% increase in IoT malware is due largely to the proliferating entry points in smart homes, said Meder, citing a “major increase in hits on light bulbs” from different brands. Cryptocurrency is a particularly attractive target due to its value, he said. Bad actors are “going in and taking over anything that has processing power to attempt to mine bitcoin,” such as smart thermostats, lights, locks, controllers and TVs, since "everything is connected these days.” On how to deal with the threats, Meder said integrators have to consider what edge protection devices their clients need to secure their networks and smart devices -- and their hosted email. HTSA integrators need to move their businesses and customers away from routers with consumer-grade security to enterprise-grade with a next-generation firewall. He also suggested installing a VPN that’s locked down tight and protecting cloud services with phishing detection. The need for custom integrators to shore up cyber liability insurance is growing as “illicit cyberactivity continues to proliferate on a global scale,” said Tom Doherty, HTSA director-new technology initiatives. Global losses due to cybercrime will exceed $6 trillion this year, said Doherty, citing Cybersecurity Ventures data. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are particularly vulnerable, he said, citing National Cyber Security Alliance data that shows over 70% of all cyberattacks target small businesses. SMBs that store any records online “need dedicated cyber liability protection,” he said.

Illinois legislators should support a bill that prohibits app store owners from forcing developers to use exclusive in-app payment systems for collecting user payments, advocates wrote Wednesday. Introduced in March by Democratic Sens. Sara Feigenholtz and Robert Peters, SB-2311 would “protect small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers from the harmful gatekeeping powers of large app distributers like Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store,” wrote the American Economic Liberties Project, Fight Corporate Monopolies, Color of Change, Fight for the Future, Illinois PIRG, Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Public Citizen. Apple and Google didn’t comment.

The U.S. Supreme Court should decline again to review when it’s OK for police to require someone to unlock an encrypted cellphone, New Jersey said Friday in docket 20-937. In Andrews v. New Jersey, a prosecutor secured a court order directing Robert Andrews, an Essex County sheriff's officer the time, to turn over passwords for two cellphones. Andrews challenged, citing Fifth Amendment protections, but the New Jersey Supreme Court said those protections don’t apply to passwords. No new circuits or state supreme courts have weighed in since October, when the high court chose not to hear a similar Pennsylvania case (see 2010050042), New Jersey told SCOTUS. "Petitioner claims a different result is nevertheless warranted, but he faces a significant threshold problem: Petitioner has not yet gone to trial, let alone been convicted and sentenced.” Future trial court proceedings “may obviate the need for review of any Fifth Amendment issues in this case,” the state said. New Jersey disagreed there's a judicial split over application of the “foregone conclusion” doctrine, which says it’s not self-incriminating to give the state information it already knows. “Petitioner alleges a split over whether a suspect could be required to verbally ‘communicate’ the ‘pure testimony’ of his device’s passcode. ... Yet in this case, Petitioner will be allowed to directly enter the passcode without divulging it.” The state Supreme Court was correct, New Jersey said. "Whenever a suspect enters his passcode, he is only confirming that he ... knows the code. If the government knows as much, that suspect has not incriminated himself and the Fifth Amendment is not offended. ... A contrary rule would elevate form over substance, allowing the State to enforce a search warrant if a device is protected by biometrics but not by a passcode. And it would offer those seeking to evade a lawful search warrant a path to do so.” The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation support SCOTUS hearing the New Jersey case (see 2101080057).

AirFuel Alliance is launching an automated test system and certification program to support the AirFuel Resonant wireless charging standard. The program paves the way for deployment of AirFuel Resonant-certified products, President Sanjay Gupta said Thursday.

NTIA plans a virtual meeting April 29 at noon EDT about the multistakeholder process on promoting IoT software component transparency, says Thursday’s Federal Register (see 2012100021).

Bad actors are picking up the pace and raising the bar on cyberthreats, blogged Tom Emmons, Akamai principal product architect, about the fast-rising rate of “volumetric” distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks this year. “We've already seen more attacks over 50 Gbps” through March 24 than in all 2019, Emmons said Wednesday. “DDoS attacks are getting bolder and badder. Three of the six biggest volumetric DDoS attacks Akamai has ever recorded and mitigated have been in the past month, including the two largest known DDoS extortion attacks to date.” Threat actors “continue to expand their sights,” said Emmons. “The number of customer attacks per month has continued at near record volume, and we have continued to see diversification of attacks across geographies and industries.” Criminals apparently cling to "hope of a major Bitcoin payout,” he said. Bad actors “have started to ramp up their efforts and their attack bandwidth, which puts to rest any notion that DDoS extortion was old news.”

AT&T began supplying 4G LTE connectivity to 2021-model Maseratis in the U.S. under a multiyear agreement, said the carrier Tuesday. Access is included with unlimited AT&T in-car Wi-Fi through AT&T data plans. Maserati owners can sign up for a free trial lasting three months or 3 GB, whichever comes first.