All posts tagged: theft

Tesla and Rivian are settling their battery tech theft lawsuit

Tesla and Rivian are settling their battery tech theft lawsuit

Published by skeptic

(Source: Tesla) Tesla and Rivian have been embroiled in a lawsuit in which the former accused the latter of having stolen battery technology by poaching Tesla employees. It sounds like the two automakers are finally about to settle the lawsuit, which has been going on for 4 years. In 2020, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Rivian over allegedly stealing trade secrets by hiring former Tesla employees and encouraging them to bring documents. Rivian has denied the allegations. When Tesla filed the lawsuit, it wasn’t clear what trade secrets Tesla was claiming Rivian had stolen. However, we noted that the employees listed in the lawsuits were two recruiters, an EHS manager, and a manager of Tesla’s charging networks. The automaker claimed that these employees brought “documents consisting of highly sensitive trade secret, confidential, and proprietary engineering information” when they went to work for Rivian. A year later, Tesla expanded the lawsuit, claiming more specifically that Rivian was “stealing the core technology for its next-generation batteries.” At first, the companies tried to settle out of court, but it didn’t work …

How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its Theft by the Nazis

How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its Theft by the Nazis

Published by José

George Clooney may be bet­ter regard­ed as an actor than as a direc­tor, but his occa­sion­al work in the lat­ter capac­i­ty reveals an admirable inter­est in less­er-dra­ma­tized chap­ters of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. His films have found their mate­r­i­al in every­thing from the ear­ly years of the NFL to the racial strife in Levit­town to even The Gong Show cre­ator Chuck Bar­ris’ dubi­ous past as a CIA assas­sin. A decade ago, he direct­ed The Mon­u­ments Men, whose ensem­ble cast – includ­ing Matt Damon, Bill Mur­ray, John Good­man, and Clooney him­self — play Allied sol­diers tasked with recov­er­ing the many works of art stolen by the Nazis dur­ing World War II. The Mon­u­ments Men is based, if loose­ly, on real events; hence the inclu­sion of a few of its clips in the new Great Art Explained video above. In it, gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne gets into the sub­ject of how the Nazis plun­dered Europe’s cul­tur­al trea­sures through one paint­ing in par­tic­u­lar: one of dar­ing Expres­sion­ist Egon Schiele’s Boats Mir­rored in the Water series, whose where­abouts remain unknown. Before the …

Suspects in Banksy’s ‘Girl With Balloon’ Theft Head to Court

Suspects in Banksy’s ‘Girl With Balloon’ Theft Head to Court

Published by skeptic

Two men accused of stealing Banksy’s painting Girl With Balloon from a London gallery late Sunday night are set to appear before the court next month on charges with non-residential burglary, according to NBC News. The picture was stolen late Sunday night from Grove Gallery on New Cavendish Street in central London. Girl With Balloon was the only work stolen, however it wasn’t missing for long.  By Thursday, police had brought two suspects in custody and the painting recovered.  Grove Gallery was hosting an exhibition of works by the cloak-and-dagger artist titled “Banksy’s London Rebellion,” which opened on August 21 and closed September 7, the day before the heist. According to the BBC there more than $2 million of art in the gallery at the time. Related Articles Court documents priced the Girl With Ballon print at $354,000. CCTV footage of the burglary shows a man dressed in black plants and a black hoodie, with his face covered, smashing the glass front door of the gallery with a heavy object, then ramming his shoulder into the cracked glass until he can fit through. Once …

Hacker claims theft of Piramal Group’s employee data

Hacker claims theft of Piramal Group’s employee data

Published by skeptic

A hacker claims to be selling data relating to thousands of current and former employees of the Indian conglomerate Piramal Group, a multinational company that operates across pharma, financial services and real estate. In a listing on a known cybercrime forum last week seen by TechCrunch, the pseudonymous threat actor published a small portion of the allegedly stolen Piramal data for an undisclosed amount. The data sample included full names and email addresses. The allegedly stolen data could be a boon for cybercriminals by using the information for targeting employees with cyberattacks. Piramal Group has over 10,000 employees and 21 diverse nationalities working from its offices in over 30 countries worldwide, according to its website. The Mumbai-headquartered company also has a brand presence across over 100 markets globally. Piramal operates multiple subsidiaries, including the non-banking financial company Piramal Enterprises, pharmaceutical firm Piramal Pharma, healthcare company Piramal Healthcare, and real estate development arm Piramal Realty. TechCrunch obtained a larger sample of data from the threat actor containing over 10,000 entries. TechCrunch validated some of the entries …

Identity Theft: You’d Be Amazed At What You Did Last Night Online

Identity Theft: You’d Be Amazed At What You Did Last Night Online

Published by skeptic

Last Monday, we looked at the recent Interpol crackdown on international online scams. Basically, these days, it is much easier to scam people using social media than to hack their computers and that principle applies to identity theft as much as anything else. In the United States, identity theft was the top complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2023. It comprised 20% of complaints for a total of 1,036,903. Credit card fraud was by far the most common type, which is consistent with the fact that people use their cards a lot on line. They are often at a higher statistical risk than they realize. Millennials are most at risk At Cloudwards, a review site for reviews of cloud and privacy software, cloud technician Samuel Okoruwa notes that tech savvy Millennials are actually most at risk: People aged 30 to 39 years old reported the most cases of identity theft in 2023. People in this age bracket reported 272,971 identity theft cases. Those aged 80 and above had the fewest cases of …

What does the London NHS hospitals data theft mean for patients? | Cybercrime

What does the London NHS hospitals data theft mean for patients? | Cybercrime

Published by skeptic

A Russian criminal gang has stolen highly sensitive NHS patient data, including the results of blood tests for HIV and cancer, after a cyber-attack this month. The group posted nearly 400GB of data overnight from a hack of Synnovis, a private/NHS joint venture that provides pathology services such as blood tests and transfusions. Seven hospitals run by two NHS trusts, Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College, have been affected by the ransomware attack. Qilin, the Russian gang that carried it out, has now released data it extracted during the cyberheist. The release of private information suggests that Synnovis has refused to pay a ransom to Qilin to decrypt its systems and delete any stolen data. Synnovis said that an analysis of the data was under way in conjunction with the NHS, the National Cyber Security Centre and other partners which “aims to confirm whether the data was taken from Synnovis’ systems and what information it contains”. What data has been stolen?  The hackers have a huge cache of data they have stolen from Synnovis, …

Procurement Theft Drives Fraud Costs Soaring In Ministry Of Defence

Procurement Theft Drives Fraud Costs Soaring In Ministry Of Defence

Published by skeptic

Fraud has set the MoD back by almost £1billion in 14 years (Alamy) 3 min read3 hr Procurement fraud has sent costs soaring the Ministry of Defence (MoD), after new figures revealed it had led to 90 per cent of detected fraud value since 2020. A written question, tabled by Maria Eagle in April, required the Government to find cases of fraud in the MoD since the Conservatives came to power 14 years ago.  Defence fraud has cost the Government almost £1 billion since 2010.  Cases of procurement fraud appeared to be the main driving force for the rising costs over the last four years. It accounted for more than 90 per cent of the total figure of just over £600 million costs since 2020. Procurement fraud was broadly defined in 2011 by National Fraud Authority as covering a wide range of “illegal activities from bid rigging during the pre-contract award phase through to false invoicing in the post-contract award phase”.  A 2021 Public Accounts Committee report found the MoD’s procurement system was “broken”, and repeatedly wasting …

Identity Theft Is a “Kafkaesque” Nightmare. AI Makes It Way Worse.

Identity Theft Is a “Kafkaesque” Nightmare. AI Makes It Way Worse.

Published by skeptic

This is the story of William Woods. No, not the fake William Woods. The real William Woods. It’s a story that traverses more than three decades, zigzagging from a hot dog stand to a jail with a stop at a mental institution and ending with—well, you. It all began 36 years ago in the sun-drenched streets of Albuquerque, where William Woods was working at a hot dog stand, serving office workers and city dwellers. On an otherwise unremarkable day, his coworker—a large man with dark hair named Matthew Keirans—stole Woods’s wallet. With it, Keirans pilfered not just Woods’s Social Security number but eventually his entire identity. The theft was the seed of an existential usurpation and the beginning of a Kafkaesque nightmare for William Woods. That’s because Keirans had decided to become William Woods to escape his own troubled past. By 1990, Keirans had used the Social Security number to obtain a Colorado ID in Woods’s name; he then opened a bank account (also in Woods’s name) and wrote some checks that later bounced, according …

Ely Museum ‘devastated’ after ‘despicable’ theft of ‘irreplaceable’ Bronze Age gold artefacts | UK News

Ely Museum ‘devastated’ after ‘despicable’ theft of ‘irreplaceable’ Bronze Age gold artefacts | UK News

Published by skeptic

A museum has said it is “devastated” after thieves stole gold artefacts dating back to the Bronze Age, around 3,000 years ago. Ely Museum in Cambridgeshire said the East Cambridgeshire gold torc and a gold bracelet were stolen in a break-in during the early hours of Tuesday morning. The museum acquired the torc, valued at £220,000, in 2017 using grants and donations from the public. Image: Pic: Cambridgeshire County Council It is described on the museum’s website as its “most prized object”. Museum curator, Elie Hughes, said on X: “We are devastated by the loss to the museum and to the local heritage of the region. “It is a huge blow after the incredible support from the community in acquiring the torc in 2017. “As a culturally significant object, it cannot be replaced. Our priority now is working with the police to locate the stolen objects.” Cambridgeshire Police said it was looking for two suspects on e-scooters who were believed to be involved in the theft, the Museum said. Detective Inspector Kiri Mazur, quoted by …

U.S. Soldier Is Detained in Russia and Accused of Theft, Officials Say

U.S. Soldier Is Detained in Russia and Accused of Theft, Officials Say

Published by Sam

A man who has been identified by American officials as an Army sergeant was detained in Russia last week after a local woman reported him on allegations of theft, the Russian authorities said on Tuesday. He will remain in jail until at least July, they said. The detention of the soldier, Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, 34, came to light on Monday, when the U.S. State and Defense Departments said that he was being held. He was detained in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok while he was in the process of returning home to Texas, after being stationed in South Korea. Instead of returning directly to the United States, Sergeant Black traveled through China to Vladivostok “for personal reasons,” according to Cynthia O. Smith, a U.S. Army spokeswoman. She said that he “did not request official clearance” and that the Defense Department “did not authorize his travel to China and Russia.” An official with the Russian Ministry of Interior informed the U.S. Embassy in Moscow last week that he had been arrested “for theft …