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After SAP settlement, Oracle draws EU antitrust attention over licensing practices

✇Security | CIO

Oracle has reportedly garnered some unwanted attention from the European Commission around its enterprise software licensing practices.

The Commission’s antitrust regulators are currently gathering information from third parties about Oracle’s licensing practices to assess whether there is evidence to warrant further action, although it has yet to open a formal investigation into the company, MLex, an independent news outlet specializing in legal risk and regulation, reported.

The Commission, in response to an email inquiry, said that there is currently no formal investigation into any company but stressed that it would continue to monitor possible further anticompetitive practices and abusive conduct in the enterprise software sector.

Oracle did not immediately respond to an email query seeking comments on the issue.

The reported scrutiny into Oracle comes weeks after SAP agreed to binding commitments to address Commission concerns over practices that restricted customers’ ability to switch support providers or terminate certain contracts.

If the EU sees similar practices at Oracle, where licensing or support terms make it costly for enterprises to reduce dependency, switch providers, or change their usage, the regulators could potentially apply the same principle: vendor dominance cannot be used to artificially restrict customer choice in the aftermarket.

In that scenario, the Commission is likely to open an investigation or proceedings under the EU’s Article 102 rules, which prohibit companies with a dominant position in a defined market from engaging in any abusive conduct.

Impact on Oracle products

Several products and their attached licensing practices across Oracle’s portfolio are at risk of drawing more scrutiny from regulators, analysts say.

“Oracle Database is probably the biggest area. Its complex processor, virtualization, and cloud licensing rules can make it difficult for enterprises to know exactly what they owe. Regulators could examine whether these rules make running Oracle on competing clouds or reducing Oracle usage unnecessarily expensive,” said Pareekh Jain, principal analyst at Pareekh Consulting.

Jain pointed out that Java too could attract regulators’ attention as Oracle’s subscription charges are based broadly on an enterprise’s employee strength rather than just Java users.

“For some enterprises, this has sharply increased costs. Regulators could examine whether this pricing approach is reasonable for a technology already deeply embedded in enterprises,” Jain noted.

Similarly, its on-premises ERP portfolio and CRM applications, which include Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Siebel, and Hyperion, could also come under the Commission’s radar, mostly because the licenses of these products resemble practices that could present parallels with the concerns raised in the SAP case.

“Enterprise customers often run these products for decades and want third-party support rather than migration. Rules that make dropping Oracle support, reducing unused licenses or moving only part of the estate to another support provider expensive could attract scrutiny,” Jain said.

The analyst was referring to documentation around Oracle’s Software Technical Support Policies that generally require licenses within a license set to maintain the same level of technical support.

The policies also allow Oracle to reprice support for the remaining licenses when customers reduce their footprint and impose additional costs on reinstating lapsed support.

That policy document also covers a broad range of Oracle products beyond its ERP and CRM portfolio, including its database, middleware and infrastructure software, potentially widening the scope of products and licensing practices that could draw regulatory scrutiny.

A separate Oracle technical support policy for Exadata also contains similar provisions related to support levels, license reductions, and reinstating lapsed support.

What the possible EU scrutiny could mean for CIOs

That prospect of greater scrutiny by the Commission, especially in the wake of the SAP case, could be significant not just for Oracle but also for the enterprises that have built large parts of their IT estates around its software.

For enterprises, the most immediate benefit, according to Manoj Chandra Jha, principal analyst at Nord-IQ Research, would be more negotiating power.

“Expect CIOs and procurement teams to use the mere possibility of a Commission scrutiny to extract concessions in ongoing renewals long before any formal remedy is decided,” Jha said.

“Enterprises could push for greater freedom to drop unused licenses, use third-party support, reduce maintenance costs, or gradually move workloads away from Oracle without being punished financially,” echoed Jain.

That, in turn, could help CIOs reduce Oracle dependency step by step instead of going through a full migration that is bound to be expensive, Jain added.

However, for CIOs and enterprises without ongoing or upcoming Oracle renewals, Jha cautioned against expecting immediate cost relief or contractual flexibility based on the SAP precedent.

“This is likely to be a multi-year outcome, not a Q4 planning assumption,” he said.

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The EU AI Act just gave you a breach notification clock you didn’t know about

✇Security | CIO

Most security teams already have a breach clock memorized. GDPR gives you 72 hours. SEC rules give public companies four business days after determining an incident is material. Those numbers get built into incident response runbooks, tabletop exercises and escalation paths, because the clock starts the moment the team confirms something happened.

Article 73 of the EU AI Act adds a third clock, and in my work advising enterprise clients on AI governance, I have yet to see one with a runbook for it.

The obligation took effect on August 2, and it did so alone. The EU’s Digital Omnibus on AI, in force since late July, pushed the rest of the Act’s high-risk enforcement wave — classification, conformity assessment, technical documentation — back to December 2027. Article 73 was not part of that reprieve, though the extra time elsewhere is worth using to get ready. It requires providers of high-risk AI systems to report serious incidents to national market surveillance authorities within 15 days by default, 10 days if a death is involved and just 2 days for incidents the Act classifies as widespread or as a serious disruption to critical infrastructure. Coverage of Article 73 so far has treated it as a legal filing requirement, handled through the same channel as a data protection filing. That framing misses what the obligation is. It is an incident response deadline, and it runs on a different trigger than the breach clocks most security teams already know.

A client once asked me, almost as an aside, whether their customer-facing AI tool would trigger a reporting duty if it simply gave someone bad information rather than getting hacked. At the time, the honest answer was probably not, under any framework they were tracking. Article 73 changes that, and most organizations building or buying AI for the EU market have not caught up yet.

What counts as a trigger here is broader than most teams expect

GDPR’s 72-hour clock starts when you become aware of a personal data breach. That is a bounded question. Did data leave the environment? Was it accessed without authorization? Article 73 asks something harder. The European Commission’s draft guidance takes the position that an indirect causal link between an AI system and a downstream harm is enough to trigger the reporting duty. Their example is a loan denial that traces back to a flawed AI credit assessment. The AI system does not cause harm the moment it produces the assessment, only once a human acts on it and denies the loan. The fundamental rights category requires the infringement to interfere with Charter-protected rights at scale, which is why the Commission illustrates that threshold with patterns, a recruitment tool that discriminates systematically or a credit system that categorically rejects an entire neighborhood. Under the Commission’s reading, once a pattern like that exists, the clock starts when the provider becomes aware of it, not when the system generated the output.

Here’s a plainer version of that pattern. A public benefits agency uses an AI system to match applicants against its records. A flaw in the matching logic occasionally conflates applicants, and over several weeks it happens to a run of different people, each flagged as already receiving the same benefit elsewhere and suspended. Nobody catches the pattern at the time, because each flag looks unremarkable on its own. Applicants don’t find out until their payments stop arriving, weeks after the first mismatch. The system never malfunctioned in any way security tooling would catch. It just produced bad matches until people started missing payments.

That is a different kind of determination than “Did we get breached?” It requires tracing a causal chain from a model output through a downstream decision to an actual harm, then judging how confident you are in that link before you are required to report it. Most incident response teams have a well-practiced instinct for confirming unauthorized access, but few have one for confirming that an AI system caused a harm that surfaced elsewhere in the business, days or weeks later. I have watched security leaders confidently answer, “Were we breached?” in minutes, then go quiet when asked, “Did our AI system cause this?” because nobody owns that second question yet.

Why this does not fit into an existing IR playbook

Most incident response programs are built around a single moment: detection. Something trips an alert, a SOC analyst confirms it and the clock starts. Article 73 incidents will not look like that at all. The AI system that produced the flawed output may show no signs of compromise. Nothing gets flagged by a SIEM. The first sign might come from a customer complaint, an internal audit finding or a pattern a compliance analyst notices months after the AI system made the decision.

That means the “becoming aware” clause in Article 73 is doing real work, and most organizations have not decided who is responsible for noticing. Is it the team monitoring the AI system’s technical performance, the business unit acting on its outputs, or whoever eventually hears the complaint? Under Article 73, the clock starts when any of them establishes, or suspects, the causal link, and 15 days is not a long runway if the first internal conversation about “is this our incident” does not happen until day six or seven. I have seen governance structures where a business unit head, a model risk team and security each assumed someone else owned this judgment call. In practice nobody did, and that gap is where a 15-day clock burns down to five.

Some security teams are already mapping agent governance to a maturity model, arguing that oversight must scale with autonomy, moving from agent identities that are barely inventoried toward ones that are bounded, monitored and revocable in real time. Article 73 raises the stakes on that model considerably. The less a human reviews an AI system’s output before it reaches a customer, the more likely a downstream harm surfaces without anyone watching for it in real time, which is exactly the blind spot Article 73 is designed to close.

What needs to change

A few additions belong in an existing incident response program before this becomes a live problem instead of a paper requirement.

First, a defined owner for the causal link determination. Data breach response usually has a clear owner: security confirms the technical facts, legal makes the materiality call. Article 73 needs an equivalent split: Someone technical enough to trace an AI system’s output to a downstream decision and someone with authority to make the reporting call once that link looks plausible rather than certain. In practice, I recommend naming this owner in the incident response plan, not leaving it to be sorted out during the first real incident, when the clock is already running.

Second, a lower bar for opening an investigation. If GDPR taught teams to investigate the moment unauthorized access is suspected, Article 73 requires investigating the moment a downstream harm is suspected to trace back to an AI system, when the system looks normal to security monitoring. That means feeding business unit complaints and customer escalations into the same triage process that currently only starts from technical alerts.

Third, a documented decision log for the indirect link judgment call. Given how broadly the Commission has defined what counts as reportable, organizations will make defensible calls not to report many ambiguous situations. Those decisions need to be documented with the reasoning behind them, the way a security team documents a false positive call, because a regulator revisiting that judgment months later will expect to see how it was made rather than take the outcome on faith.

Fourth, controls built into the AI system, not bolted on after the fact. A defined owner and a lower investigation bar help catch a problem once it surfaces, but neither reduces how often a flawed output reaches a customer first. Scoped credentials, tool allowlists and pre-action approval hooks cut down on how many incidents exist to report.

The AI Act’s high-risk obligations have absorbed most of the attention this year, because conformity assessments and technical documentation are heavy lifts with long lead times. Article 73 looks lighter by comparison, a reporting duty rather than a certification process. It is not lighter. It asks security and compliance teams to build a new kind of judgment into their incident response programs, on a clock as tight as anything GDPR or the SEC have required. Treat the deferral on the rest of the high-risk package as what it actually is, extra runway to build that judgment and name its owner, because the conformity paperwork still gives you months and Article 73 still gives you days.

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Trump Targets Foreign Technology in New U.S. Power Grid Security Order

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

Trump targets foreign-made power grid equipment, citing cyber, sabotage and supply-chain risks to U.S. national security.

Executive Order 14420, signed on August 26, targets equipment and technologies that could expose the power grid to sabotage, unauthorized access, malicious remote activity or supply-chain disruption.

The timing matters. The White House points to the rapid expansion of data centers, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and defense production as reasons why the United States now depends even more heavily on reliable electricity. A disruption that might once have been treated primarily as an energy problem can now affect defense operations, critical infrastructure, emergency services and large parts of the economy.

The order frames the problem in two ways. Foreign-made equipment can introduce a direct cybersecurity risk, including the possibility of hidden digital access mechanisms, while dependence on overseas suppliers can create a second vulnerability if geopolitical tensions or trade disruptions suddenly cut off critical components.

The White House’s language is unusually broad when describing the scope of the concern.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that the situation with respect to the foreign supply of bulk-power system electric equipment constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States and hereby declare a national emergency with respect to that threat.” reads the Executive Order 14420. “This threat exists both in the case of individual transactions and when transactions are considered as a class. To deal with this threat, additional steps are required to protect the security, integrity, and reliability of bulk-power system electric equipment used in the United States.”

That definition matters because the order isn’t aimed only at a specific piece of hardware from a specific country. It creates a framework under which the Energy Secretary can determine whether particular foreign entities, suppliers, countries or equipment present an unacceptable risk and then restrict transactions involving them.

The restrictions apply to the acquisition, importation, transfer or installation of foreign-produced bulk-power equipment when the relevant transaction involves a designated Covered Foreign Entity and meets one of the risk conditions set out in the order. Those conditions include the possibility of sabotage, subversion, unauthorized access, malicious remote action or disruption of the power system and its supply chain.

The order also reaches beyond the physical equipment itself. Its scope includes critical components, software, firmware, digital services, maintenance services and remote-access capabilities associated with covered equipment.

“the transaction involves bulk-power system electric equipment — or any critical component, software, firmware, digital service, maintenance service, or remote-access capability associated with such equipment — designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a Covered Foreign Entity; and” continues the order.

In practical terms, the government isn’t treating a transformer, an industrial controller and the software that manages it as completely separate security questions.

That is particularly relevant to industrial control systems. The definition of covered equipment includes remote terminal units, programmable logic controllers, intelligent electronic devices, distributed control systems and safety instrumented systems, alongside transformers, generators, inverters, battery storage systems, protective relays, metering equipment and high-voltage circuit breakers. The order also allows agencies to consider software, firmware, remote access, update mechanisms and other supply-chain dependencies when deciding whether equipment falls within its security concerns.

The geographical scope is also worth noting. The order defines the bulk-power system around interconnected transmission infrastructure and generation resources needed for grid reliability, including transmission lines rated at 69 kV or higher. Local electricity distribution facilities fall outside that definition.

This isn’t only about equipment that companies might buy tomorrow. The Energy Secretary can also impose conditions on foreign-manufactured or foreign-operated equipment already installed before the order took effect. Depending on the risk, those measures could require operators to identify, isolate, monitor, secure, disconnect, replace or remove equipment. The order specifically requires officials to consider reliability, safety, the availability of secure replacements and continuity of essential services before demanding isolation or replacement.

That last point is important because securing a power grid isn’t as simple as unplugging a suspicious device. Removing a component without a suitable replacement can itself create an operational problem. The order therefore leaves room for phased compliance and negotiated mitigation measures rather than assuming that every risky component can disappear overnight.

The government also wants to avoid turning security screening into a permanent procurement bottleneck. The Energy Secretary can establish criteria for pre-qualified equipment and vendors, creating a list of products and suppliers that can receive exemptions from the baseline restrictions. At the same time, the order makes clear that pre-qualification doesn’t prevent the government from scrutinizing or restricting a transaction later if circumstances warrant it.

The order doesn’t name a specific country as the target. Instead, it defines a Covered Foreign Entity broadly enough to include governments under certain U.S. arms embargoes or sanctions regimes, as well as entities that the relevant U.S. authorities determine are engaged in conduct detrimental to national security or foreign policy. SecurityWeek also noted that the structure resembles earlier Trump-era restrictions on foreign bulk-power equipment, including measures that previously focused on entities associated with China.

The order does not mention any country by name. However, its structure is very similar to a 2020 Trump-era order on the U.S. power grid, which later led the Department of Energy to ban companies linked to China.

The next phase will be regulatory rather than rhetorical. Within 120 days, the Energy Secretary is expected to issue rules or regulations needed to implement the order, including procedures for identifying covered entities, equipment and countries and for licensing transactions that would otherwise be prohibited. The administration also wants recommendations for changes to federal procurement rules that would give greater weight to national security risks and favor U.S.-manufactured energy infrastructure.

Those procurement changes have their own timetable. The Energy Secretary has 180 days to develop recommendations for revisions to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, while the FAR Council would then have 90 days to consider proposing corresponding amendments for public comment.

The policy fits into a wider push by the administration to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains for strategically important infrastructure. The Department of Energy said earlier this month that it is working to increase domestic production and availability of critical grid components, pointing to rapid growth in electricity demand and the need to strengthen the grid supply chain.

For cybersecurity professionals, however, the most interesting part of the order isn’t the preference for domestic manufacturing. It’s the decision to treat supply-chain exposure, remote access and embedded technology as part of the attack surface of the power grid.

That changes the question organizations need to ask about critical equipment. It’s no longer enough to know whether a device has a vulnerability today; operators also need to understand who made it, who controls the supplier, where critical software and firmware come from, who can remotely access the equipment, how updates reach it and what happens if that supply chain suddenly becomes unavailable.

The uncomfortable reality is that a power grid compromise doesn’t necessarily begin with someone breaking through the perimeter of a utility network. It can begin much earlier, when an organization buys a component it can’t fully inspect, relies on a remote maintenance channel it doesn’t control, or becomes dependent on a supplier it can’t replace quickly.

That’s the security problem Executive Order 14420 is trying to address. The White House has effectively moved part of the grid’s cyber defense line back into procurement, manufacturing and supply-chain decisions. And for critical infrastructure operators, that’s a much harder problem to solve than simply finding another firewall.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, power grid)

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Meta to Pay Up to $18B Over Teen Social Media Use

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

Meta will pay up to $18B and cap teen Facebook and Instagram use at two hours daily after nearly all US states sued over child safety.

Meta will pay up to $18 billion over the next decade and impose real usage limits on teenagers using Facebook and Instagram, settling claims that the company deliberately designed its platforms to addict children. The deal ended a federal trial mid-stream, right as Instagram head Adam Mosseri had begun testifying and Mark Zuckerberg was expected to take the stand next.

The timing made sense given the huge potential penalties. Four states, California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, were seeking up to $200 billion in damages. Before the trial, Meta said they could demand as much as $1.4 trillion. Against those figures, the $18 billion settlement looks relatively small, although it still equals about three to four months of Meta’s profits.

The most important part of the deal is what Meta agreed to change. Teenagers will be limited to two hours a day on Facebook and Instagram. Meta will also block access between midnight and 6 a.m. unless a parent gives permission, and it will turn off most push notifications during school hours.

“The focus of this case was to protect our kids,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement reported by Reuters. “The relief we are getting in this settlement is very meaningful and well beyond what any court has ordered or is likely to order.””

What the settlement leaves unchanged matters too. Meta does not have to stop using personalized recommendations or targeted ads for teenagers. It also does not have to remove specific types of content that researchers have linked to negative effects, such as posts that can make users feel worse about their bodies. A two-hour limit is still a meaningful restriction, but Meta can continue trying to maximize engagement during those two hours.

The deal also creates an interesting financial incentive. Of the roughly $16.7 billion going to 47 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and other territories, about $12.7 billion is guaranteed. The remaining $5 billion depends on whether Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube introduce similar protections for teenagers. This gives Meta a financial reason to push its competitors to adopt the same rules, which is why the company reportedly plans to use newspaper ads to encourage TikTok and YouTube to follow suit.

Separately, Wednesday’s settlement also resolved lingering state privacy claims tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with Meta agreeing to pay $459 million on top of everything else. That’s an old wound getting stitched up alongside a much newer one, in the same afternoon.

Not every state joined the settlement. New Mexico stayed out after winning a $567 million public nuisance ruling against Meta earlier this month, on top of a separate $375 million jury verdict. Attorney General Raul Torrez said the settlement didn’t include some changes his case had pushed for, including stronger protection against adults targeting children and a ban on sexualized AI chatbot interactions with minors. Still, he called the deal a step forward.

Florida rejected the settlement altogether. Attorney General James Uthmeier said the payouts amount to “peanuts” compared with the harm caused and said Florida would take Meta to trial instead.

Legal experts already see the settlement as a possible model for future cases. Northwestern law professor James Speta said Meta and other tech companies faced growing pressure to change anyway, from Congress, state lawmakers and the public. That makes the settlement more than a single case: it could set a standard that courts and regulators use when judging other platforms.

Thousands of similar lawsuits from individuals, school districts and municipalities are still moving through courts across the U.S. If those cases follow the same pattern, we haven’t seen the last of these headlines.

“Today, we are announcing an agreement with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general across US states, territories, and the District of Columbia, building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.” reads the statement published by Meta.

“Over the years, we have consistently partnered with parents and experts — listening, learning, and building. That’s why we launched Teen Accounts in 2024, to bring automatic protections to teens, and more control for parents.”

The agreement aims to push YouTube, TikTok and other platforms to adopt similar protections for teenagers.

“While this is an important step, the fact is that teens move fluidly between dozens of apps a day. All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another.” concludes Meta. “For meaningful progress to happen, we urge TikTok and YouTube to join us and state attorneys general in adopting this new standard, to ensure teens use social media in a healthy and responsible way.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Facebook)

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When the Algorithm Fires You: Uber Faces €825M Fine

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

Uber faces an €825M GDPR fine for automatically suspending drivers without human review, highlighting the risks of AI decisions affecting workers.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority handed Uber its largest privacy fine yet, and this one isn’t about data transfers or cookie consent. The regulator imposed an 825 million euro penalty, roughly $964 million, over Uber’s use of fully automated software to suspend driver accounts, sometimes permanently, with no human ever reviewing whether the system got it right.

The violation is clear under EU law. The GDPR limits fully automated decisions when they can significantly affect a person’s life. An algorithm that can take away someone’s ability to earn a living, without any human review, falls directly into this category. The regulator also found that Uber failed to properly tell drivers when automated systems made these decisions, which the GDPR requires companies to disclose.

“The Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), the Dutch data protection authority, imposes a fine of 824,990,000 euros on Uber. The reason for this is that the AP has ruled that Uber made fully automated decisions about drivers. In case of suspicions of fraud or customer reviews that were too low, drivers’ accounts were automatically temporarily deactivated or, in case of persistent low customer reviews, permanently deactivated. As a result, their income was lost via Uber during the deactivation.” reads the statement published by the Dutch data protection authority. “According to the AP, Uber has violated the prohibition of fully automated decision-making under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The AP also found that Uber did not sufficiently inform drivers about automatic decision-making. Uber has now stopped the violations.”

The fine covers Uber’s practices from 2018 to 2022, so it concerns systems the company has already discontinued. Uber highlighted this point in its response, arguing that the regulator examined old policies rather than practices still in use today.

“Uber used software to track drivers’ (driving) behaviour and to track customer reviews. If that software detected a suspicion of fraud or customer reviews were too low, the accounts of the drivers concerned were automatically deactivated.” continues the Dutch authority. “There was no human assessment here. This occurred between 2018 and 2022.”

Uber also said it takes decisions that affect drivers’ income seriously. The company pointed to human reviews, safeguards and an appeals process for drivers who believe the system made a mistake. The appeal will have to determine whether these protections existed during the period covered by the fine or came later.

And Uber is appealing. The company has stated it disagrees with both the decision and the size of the fine, setting up another round in what’s become a recurring pattern between Uber and Dutch regulators specifically.

This is the fourth time the Dutch authority has fined Uber, which on its own says something about the relationship here. The previous record holder was a 290 million euro fine in 2024 over transferring European drivers’ personal data to the US without adequate protections, a case Uber also appealed at the time. Four fines from a single regulator isn’t really a pattern of bad luck anymore; it’s a pattern of a company and a privacy regulator that keep disagreeing about the same basic question, how much human judgment has to sit between an algorithm’s decision and a person’s actual income.

The case goes beyond Uber. Many gig-economy platforms in Europe use algorithms to manage workers, routes and account status. This ruling shows the cost of relying on automated decisions without human oversight. For companies that use algorithms to make decisions affecting people’s accounts or income, saying “the algorithm decided” is no longer enough. The €825 million fine makes that lesson very clear.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, newsletter)

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TikTok Settles U.S. Child Privacy Case for $400 Million

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

TikTok will pay $400 million to settle U.S. claims that it violated child privacy laws by collecting data from users under 13.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that TikTok will pay $400 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit over children’s privacy.

“Today, the Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated entities (TikTok) resolving litigation concerning compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and its implementing regulations (COPPA).” reads the press release published by DoJ. “Under the settlement, TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and an additional $100 million upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree entered against TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly. The settlement represents one of the largest recoveries ever obtained in a COPPA case.”

TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and another $100 million after a court order removes an earlier consent decree involving Musical.ly. The 2024 case, brought by the DoJ and FTC, accused TikTok of knowingly allowing children under 13 to create accounts and illegally collecting data from children using Kids Mode.

Since the Justice Department filed its lawsuit against TikTok in 2024, the company has made major changes to its ownership, management, compliance, and privacy practices. It has also introduced stronger safeguards for younger users, improved age controls, and expanded parental oversight.

The DOJ said these measures have advanced the goals of its case and strengthened protections for millions of U.S. families. The settlement reflects a focus on practical results, securing a significant recovery while recognizing TikTok’s compliance improvements. The case was filed in California and handled by the DOJ’s Civil Division following a referral from the FTC.

“This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. “The Department’s priority is ensuring that children are protected online and that companies entrusted with their personal information meet their legal obligations. This resolution secures a substantial recovery while reinforcing the protections that families expect and deserve.”

TikTok has faced regulatory scrutiny over children’s privacy before. In September 2023, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined the company €345 million for breaching the GDPR through its handling of children’s personal data.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, privacy)

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US Authorizes Private Cyber Firms to Hack Transnational Criminal Networks

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

Trump authorizes vetted US cybersecurity firms to conduct government-approved cyber operations against transnational criminal networks.

President Trump signed a national security memorandum on August 13 establishing a formal program that allows vetted private US cybersecurity companies to conduct offensive cyber operations against transnational criminal organizations under government direction and oversight. The program, managed by the National Coordination Center, covers both intelligence collection, described as Cyber Surveillance Operations, and active disruption of criminal infrastructure, described as Cyber Effects Operations. It’s the formal implementation of what the White House’s Cyber Strategy for America promised in March: unleashing the private sector as an offensive cyber instrument.

“The American private sector is the most innovative and technologically advanced in the world, and its scale, speed, and capacity secure a critical offensive cyber advantage for the United States. Yet, American businesses’ innovative capabilities have historically been underutilized in efforts to identify and disrupt criminal networks operating in cyberspace. Thus, it is the policy of the United States to use all instruments of national power, including the innovative capabilities of the private sector, to combat cybercrime.” states the memorandum.

“By partnering with vetted United States companies subject to the direction and oversight of the Federal Government, we will enhance our ability to counter TCO threats and combat transnational cybercrime, fraud, and other predatory schemes against American citizens.”

The program targets what the memo defines as Cyber-Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations, any foreign group conducting cyber-enabled crime against US interests, explicitly excluding entities that are institutional parts of foreign governments or wholly operated under foreign government direction. That carve-out matters: this program is aimed at criminal networks, not nation-state adversaries. The line between the two is often blurry in practice, but the memo establishes the presumption that a group is not government-directed unless clear intelligence says otherwise.

““Cyber Effects Operation” means activity conducted in or through the interdependent network of information technology infrastructure that includes the Internet, telecommunications networks, computers, information systems, industrial control systems, networks, and embedded processors and controllers that results in the manipulation, disruption, denial, degradation, or destruction of information systems, networks, physical or virtual infrastructure controlled by information systems, or information resident thereon.” continues the memorandum.

Program executive directors from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security must co-approve every operation in writing before any action is taken. Operations that could produce those Critical Outcomes require additional authorization beyond the program executive directors, an explicit acknowledgment that some cyber actions cross into territory governed by the laws of armed conflict.

Companies wanting to participate must clear rigorous vetting, demonstrate technical capability, submit to annual evaluations, and maintain a bond or escrow of at least $1 million that is forfeited if they violate their contract terms. The operational procedures are to be finalized within 60 days, and the Justice Department will review any operation that touches a US person or raises domestic constitutional questions. The legal question hovering over the whole program is whether the CFAA exemption for lawfully authorized government investigative activities extends to private companies acting under government contracts, a question no US court has yet answered. Jenner & Block lawyers noted the exemption likely applies when companies operate under direct government direction, but wouldn’t cover independent offensive operations without that oversight. That’s precisely why the memo makes government control explicit at every step: every operation needs written approval before action, every unintended contact with a US person or system must trigger an immediate stop and notification, and the Justice Department stays in the loop throughout.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Transnational Criminal Networks)

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Meta Ordered to Pay $567 Million Over Child Safety Failures in New Mexico Case

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

Meta was ordered to pay $567M after a judge ruled its platforms harmed children, bringing New Mexico penalties to $942M.

Meta ‘s child-safety legal bill just got another half-billion dollars heavier. A New Mexico state judge ruled that company’s platforms constitute a “public nuisance,” the BBC reports, ordering $567 million into a fund meant to address harm the company caused to children. Combined with an earlier $375 million penalty from the same case, Meta now owes New Mexico $942 million total.

“Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the social media giant is a “public nuisance” akin to air pollution and that it must put the money in a fund aimed at reducing future harms.Thursday’s ruling is in addition to $375m in fines Meta was already ordered to pay in the case, for a total of $942m.” BBC reports. “Judge Biedscheid compared Meta to a factory, with advertising and content as its product and “the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated”.”

Judge Bryan Biedscheid didn’t hold back on the framing. He compared Meta to a factory, with advertising and content as its output and the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children as the pollution that output produces. It’s the kind of comparison a judge doesn’t reach for lightly, and according to CNN, it’s the first time any social media company has been legally labeled a public nuisance.

“The court found that “just as noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air, the harmful effects of Meta’s platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world and create a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families and schools, as well as hospitals and law enforcement.”” CNN reports.

The case traces back to a 2023 lawsuit from state attorneys general, and it unfolded in two phases. A March jury verdict already found Meta had repeatedly violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, largely because its recommendation algorithms steered young users toward harmful content and predatory contacts. This second phase, decided by the judge alone rather than a jury, existed specifically to answer one question: did that harm rise to the level of a public nuisance affecting the broader community.

According to CNBC’s reporting, Biedscheid’s written ruling didn’t pull punches on causation either.

“Expert testimony supports a causal link between social media and the youth mental health crisis in New Mexico,” the ruling states, closing off Meta’s usual argument that any correlation is just correlation.

Most of the money has a specific destination. $420 million goes toward direct treatment, funding clinical and behavioral health programs for young people already affected. The remainder covers prevention training for teachers and healthcare workers, plus broader awareness efforts, all running over roughly the next five years, according to PBS.

Cash isn’t the only thing Meta has to hand over. The judge ordered a list of concrete platform changes: no recommending accounts of users under 18 to adults, no adults messaging minors, a ban on sending or receiving nudity for underage accounts, and elimination of “like” counts for teen users. Push notifications get blocked overnight and during school hours on weekdays, and total monthly usage for minors gets capped at 90 hours across Instagram and Facebook combined, roughly three hours a day.

Meta’s response was predictable and brief. A company spokesperson said Meta disagrees with the ruling and will appeal, adding that the company has worked hard to keep people safe and remains confident in its record protecting teens online.

“We disagree with the ruling and will appeal.” a company spokesman told BBC. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content,” he added.

“We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”

That’s the same basic line the company used after the March verdict, and it’s likely to stay the company line through however many appeals this takes.

New Mexico is far from the only front in this fight. Nearly three dozen state attorneys general are pursuing a separate case against Meta over child privacy violations, with another major trial starting next week in California, and Meta already lost a Los Angeles case earlier this year that found it could be held liable for building deliberately addictive platforms. Add in the EU’s ongoing preliminary findings against Meta over underage users on Instagram and Facebook, and the pattern stops looking like isolated lawsuits and starts looking like a coordinated reckoning across multiple jurisdictions at once.

Former Twitter executive Bruce Daisley put the number in context on BBC Radio 4, calling it “a drop in the ocean” against Meta’s finances; the company posted $61 billion in quarterly revenue this year, up 28% from the year before. The fine is real money by any normal measure. Whether it’s real money by Meta’s measure is a different question entirely, and it’s the one regulators worldwide are now racing to answer with policy rather than just penalties.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Meta)

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With FCC ban on new Chinese-made optical transceivers for DCs likely, it may be time to stock up

✇Security | CIO

A likely US administration ban on Chinese optical transceivers for AI data centers may have an unintended consequence: IT will rush to buy as many of the components as possible before restrictions kick in.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “is working on the measure to bar imports of new Chinese optical transceivers” and officials hope to publish and implement it this year, Reuters reported on Tuesday.  

The report, citing four sources familiar with the matter, said that the official rationale is “to prevent Chinese firms from stealing data, installing malware or disrupting service at US data centers.” The sources did, however, stress that such a ban could still be modified or shelved.

A valid concern

Analysts and consultants agree that the concern, albeit hypothetical at the moment, is valid. 

If implemented, such a ban would have a severe impact on data center (DC) strategies for both enterprises and hyperscalers. Although higher costs for replacement products would be all but certain, the greater concern is the lack of availability of non-Chinese transceivers and other components, regardless of price. 

A potentially even more worrying element of a ban is the need for far more sophisticated supply chain visibility. That is because many of those non-Chinese component suppliers actually use some Chinese components in their products, which means that the exact wording of any potential FCC restrictions will be critical. It will define how closely enterprises will need to examine their suppliers’ supply chains.

Aman Mahapatra, chief strategy officer for Tribeca Softtech, a New York City-based technology consulting firm, said that he thinks that an FCC ban is quite likely, because it “has run this exact playbook four times in eighteen months, against drones, routers, robots, and the July 28 inverter and robotics restrictions. The mechanism is tested, the machinery is warm.”

If the ban is enacted, said geopolitical analyst Irina Tsukerman, “CIOs will need to reassess vendor diversification, and other factors such as replacement compatibility, lifecycle planning and inventory management, given that many organizations have historically treated optical components as interchangeable commodities.”

“Enterprises will also need much greater visibility into firmware development, manufacturing origin, as well as subcontractors, and software update processes, because future procurement decisions are increasingly likely to examine the entire supply chain rather than simply the company selling the finished product,” she added. This will make future procurement more complex.

IT pain will vary

Tsukerman said that, although prices would certainly spike, the pain felt will vary based on the nature and size of each affected business She noted that while hyperscale operators can negotiate directly with manufacturers, secure long-term supply, and qualify multiple vendors for critical components due to their purchasing power, enterprises, regional data center operators, and colocation providers generally lack that leverage. Rather, they often depend on distributors supplying lower-cost Chinese products, making them considerably more vulnerable to price increases and delivery delays.

Mahapatra added that the preliminary indications suggest any such ban would have a “new models only” framing that would protect the installed base while restricting the next generation of products, which, he said, would be a compromise “generous enough to mute the hyperscaler objection.”

But, he said, “the enterprise CIO running a colocation expansion or private AI cluster is about to discover they are competing with Microsoft and Meta for the same constrained supply and losing.”

He recommended that enterprises lock down forward optics supply for anything they plan to build through 2028 before the restriction publishes, because, he pointed out, “announced-but-not-effective bans consume non-Chinese capacity through panic buying, and buyers who move after publication pay in schedule rather than dollars.”

However, such a move depends on how serious IT considers the cybersecurity risks from the Chinese components. Tsukerman argued that data leakage and malware fears need to be taken seriously, because modern optical transceivers often contain firmware, onboard memory, and management interfaces, and may also offer capabilities that can influence how traffic is monitored and managed throughout the data center.

In that case, she noted, “the risk would extend beyond espionage to include compromised firmware updates, manipulation of diagnostic information, disruption of maintenance support, delayed replacement shipment, or in the worst case scenario, interference with critical infrastructure during periods of heightened political tension.”

However, Mahapatra sees the risk quite differently.

“A transceiver is a comparatively dumb device converting electrical signals to optical and back, not a router running a network operating system with deep packet visibility,” he said. “The near-term espionage risk from currently shipping Chinese optics is thin, and CISOs who reallocate budget toward this threat over their software supply chain and identity attack surfaces are responding to headlines rather than risk.”

The suppliers involved

Consultant Brian Levine, executive director of FormerGov, labeled the potential US administration move as “one of the more consequential supply-chain moves the FCC has contemplated, because optical transceivers are the workhorse components that move data across fiber inside every AI data center, and Chinese vendors dominate that market.”

He noted that Chinese vendors Innolight and Eoptolink alone reportedly account for the majority of the 800-gig modules going into Nvidia’s AI clusters, so a ban “wouldn’t be a minor substitution,” and non-Chinese alternatives such as Coherent and Lumentum in the US don’t yet have sufficient capacity to fill the gap.

Nader Henein, a Gartner VP analyst, agreed, adding that since the nature of the AI data center supply chain is both complex and fragile, a small change can deliver a disproportionate industry impact.

“If you remove one provider from the equation, it’s not as if the others have capacity to fulfil the increase in demand, so it’s not simply a question of added cost, it’s a question of placing a ceiling on capacity and growth,” he said.

Tsukerman said that her list of the companies most likely to benefit from such an FCC ban would include Coherent, Lumentum, Applied Optoelectronics and Cisco’s Acacia business, while Broadcom and Marvell, as well as  Japanese and Taiwanese manufacturers, also provide important optical and connectivity technologies that support advanced networking infrastructure.

Other components in the crosshairs

She pointed out that there is also a strong probability that a transceiver ban would quickly be followed by attacks on other components. 

Networking switches, SmartNICs, data processing units, baseboard management controllers, storage controllers, intelligent power distribution units, cooling management controllers, optical transport systems, and embedded management processors “all perform functions that could influence the operation of an entire facility if compromised,” she said. “None of these products simply passes data or delivers electricity. They manage, monitor, or control critical infrastructure, making them increasingly attractive targets for supply-chain attacks.”

Her list of likely future US targets for restrictions also includes top-of-rack switches, spine switches, and rack management systems,.

Flavio Villanustre, CISO for the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group, echoed Henein’s fears about industry impact.

“I think that the appropriate response to these types of risks needs to be more nuanced than just a blanket ban,” he said. “Since 15%-20% of all world’s semiconductors are manufactured in China, and that number rises to 80% or 85% if you include Taiwan, blocking Chinese imports for these components could hamper the entire datacenter industry.”

Although there have been rumors of insecure or trojanized hardware components sourced from China in the past, given that many large American and multinational technology vendors manufacture their parts there, ”a sledgehammer approach could spike prices for these types of systems, jeopardizing development of new technologies,” he noted. “A far more reasonable approach would be to require appropriate testing and quality controls to ensure that those risks are appropriately mitigated.”

Would likely harm the US

In addition, independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said that he is skeptical about whether an FCC ban would ultimately be a good move for the US.

“It’s fair to ask whether this will truly make American technology infrastructure more secure, or whether it’s little more than a performative stunt designed to score geopolitical points,” Levy said, pointing out that Canada didn’t end up any safer because of the Huawei and ZTE ban, and “no one should fool themselves into believing a Chinese data center ban in the US would be any different. It would only add further constraints to a supply chain that’s already close to collapsing under its own weight [and it] will likely harm American interests more than anyone else’s.”

But he also concluded that such a move would likely fail, given the current global state of data center technologies. 

“Chinese suppliers and components have been so ingrained in the global technology supply chain for so long that no ban of any form could hope to have any tangible impact on so-called national security,” Levy said. “To claim otherwise exposes the true motivations of this misdirected policy strategy.”

This article originally appeared on NetworkWorld.

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The blueprint for innovation: 3 ways regulatory readiness is a competitive advantage

✇Security | CIO

Too often, brands treat compliance as a downstream exercise. Teams build products, launch new capabilities and then tack on controls afterward.

The pace of technology evolution and adoption has never been faster, and regulatory bodies are doing their best to keep up. For brands, that means they’re standing on shifting ground. They need  to modernize legacy infrastructure, adopt AI responsibly, deliver better customer experiences, maintain trust and navigate increasingly complex regulatory requirements – all at once.

I’ve witnessed this shift firsthand in payments. Fraudsters adapt faster than regulatory cycles, and customer expectations continue to rise regardless of where legislation stands. In one of the most highly regulated sectors, waiting for new mandates to arrive is a losing strategy.

The brands that lead have embraced regulatory readiness as an advantage to better inform technology architecture, operating models and partner strategy.

If I had one piece of advice for CIOs, it would be to treat compliance as part of the blueprint instead of the punch list at the end of a build. With a controls-by-design approach, a collaborative culture, and the right partnerships, any brand can embrace change with confidence and resilience.

3 ways regulatory readiness is a competitive advantage

1. Build a solid foundation

One of the most impactful strategies I’ve seen is the shift from compliance-after-the-fact to controls-by-design.

Forward-thinking financial institutions increasingly treat regulatory frameworks like DORA and the EU AI Act as design principles rather than external requirements. Instead of asking how to retrofit compliance into modern systems, they are asking how thoughtful governance can shape modernization from day one.

For example, the EU AI Act mandates transparency for high-risk AI systems like automated credit scoring. Instead of burying disclosures in the fine print, a smart bank builds an interactive feature directly into its digital banking app, which allows customers to simulate how adjustments will improve their approval odds. By doing so, they transform a regulatory obligation into innovation that builds trust.

After all, when an AI-driven decision fails, customers do not blame the algorithm. They blame the brand. The controls-by-design approach helps ensure those risks are anticipated and managed before they reach the customer.

This feels particularly urgent in the payments industry, where FedNow and stablecoins allow funds to move instantly – and irrevocably. As settlement windows shrink from days to seconds, brands need to embed capabilities like behavioral monitoring, AI-driven fraud detection, account verification and orchestration functionality directly into the transaction architecture itself – as part of the initial design – to identify and mitigate fraudulent activity as it evolves. Regulation, like Nacha’s new rules around ACH fraud, reinforces that direction, but for trust-focused brands, the work begins long before the rules change.

Each of these examples points to the same trend. Brands that embrace a controls-by-design philosophy are constructing technology architectures that are ready to adapt long before the inspectors arrive on site.

2. Align your crew

Technology architecture is only half of the story. The other half is how well your crew works together to bring that architecture to life.

For years, compliance lived in its own lane. Governance acted like a checkpoint. When technology evolved in predictable cycles, that made sense. But today, the brands making the greatest progress build shared accountability into their operating models so they can adapt to regulation in a more coordinated, consistent way.

After all, a construction project is only successful when electricians, plumbers, framers and masons coordinate every step and trust the work happening around them.

The same is true in the enterprise. Instead of focusing on separate priorities, product, engineering, operations, risk and compliance must align around shared outcomes, with greater transparency into how decisions are made, ongoing oversight and continuous feedback loops between teams. As a result, regulatory readiness becomes part of how the business works every day, change becomes easier and the broader benefits across the organization become clear.

In many organizations, I’ve observed how harmony between teams not only increases compliance but also fosters greater customer-centric innovation. When teams operate from a shared, real-time view of the customer, every interaction becomes more connected. Customers experience one brand, not a collection of disconnected teams.

That spirit of collaboration becomes even more important as AI moves deeper into customer-facing and operational workflows. AI innovation has outpaced AI regulation, which makes it even more important for brands to take the initiative to ensure proper controls are in place.

We are already seeing this play out with SR 26-2, the Federal Reserve’s latest guidance on AI for banks. While it establishes important expectations around model risk management, it leaves room for institutions to determine how agentic AI and generative AI should be governed. Instead of treating this as carte blanche, banking leaders should see this as an opportunity to build trust. By leading the way with governed, responsible GenAI and agentic AI operating models, banks can win customers’ trust long before regulation requires it.

No single department should shoulder that responsibility alone. Product teams understand how AI shapes the customer experience. Engineering teams understand how models are built, deployed and monitored. Risk and compliance teams understand governance expectations, while operations teams see how those decisions play out every day. Effective AI governance and innovation emerge when those perspectives come together around a shared view of accountability.

3. Expand your toolkit

Innovation in today’s regulatory environment requires more tools than you may have in your own toolkit.

Technology is more complex, fraud threats evolve faster and AI capabilities require significant investment and ongoing tuning. At the same time, brands have to stay ahead of customer expectations, market dynamics and evolving risk requirements.

It just doesn’t make sense to build every capability yourself when trust, resilience, compliance and speed-to-value are such integral parts of the equation. 

Throughout my career, I’ve seen success with a build-buy-partner approach that brings together the right tools for the right project.

This is particularly important in highly regulated environments, where implementation risk can be as significant as technical risk. That’s where proven results – especially through partnership – might take precedence over experimentation.

I went through this consideration just recently. CSG Forte partnered with IBM to launch PaymentsProtection.ai.

We set out to provide customers with AI-powered fraud detection and financial risk management without spending years recreating capabilities that already existed. By partnering with IBM, we were able to access additional specialty tools: AI capabilities, real-time monitoring, financial risk management expertise and external validation in one of the most sensitive areas of payments. The collaboration reduced fraud losses by 50-70%, lowered false positives and offered customers a smoother, safer experience.

In a market that never stands still, the right tools give brands the freedom to build with greater precision, adaptability and purpose.

Raise the standard

Successful brands are changing how they think about regulation. Instead of looking at it as a burden or a constraint on innovation, they are treating it like a key factor in architectural decisions, crew alignment and partner strategy.

That approach increasingly separates the brands raising the standard from those struggling to keep up. It changes the role regulation plays within the business. It infuses trust, governance and adaptability into a brand’s foundation.

Those capabilities make it easier to scale new builds, navigate future change and innovate with confidence as markets, customer expectations and regulatory requirements continue to charge ahead.

The brands shaping the future won’t be scrambling to reinforce the structure after the cracks appear. They’ll be the ones that construct resilience from the very beginning.

This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.
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FCC Restricts New Foreign Robots and Inverters Over Security Risks

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

The FCC added foreign robots and power inverters to its Covered List, while allowing security updates for existing authorized devices until 2029.

The FCC just widened its Covered List again, this time adding foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters. In plain terms, that means new models in those categories generally can’t get the equipment authorization they need for import, marketing, or sale in the US, although already authorized devices can still be sold and used.

“The Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) announces that certain prohibitions contained in 47 CFR §§ 2.932(b) and 2.1043(b) will not apply for now to certain foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters. All advanced robotic devices and power inverters authorized for use in the United States may continue to receive software and firmware updates that mitigate harm to U.S. consumers at least until January 1, 2029.” reads the FCC public notice. “These include all software and firmware updates to ensure the continued functionality of the devices, such as those that patch vulnerabilities and facilitate compatibility with different operating systems.”

The FCC Covered List is a registry of communications equipment and services considered potential national security or public safety risks in the United States. Created under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, it targets foreign-produced technologies that may raise concerns over espionage, cyber vulnerabilities, foreign influence, or supply-chain risks. Devices added to the list may face restrictions, including limits on FCC authorization for new products, additional approval requirements for hardware or software changes, and greater scrutiny for companies using these technologies.

That waiver matters because the FCC’s default rules would otherwise block permissive changes on covered equipment, including software and firmware updates that fix vulnerabilities or keep devices working with different operating systems. The agency is trying to avoid a stupid outcome where security updates get trapped behind a rule meant to cut off risky gear.

“OET finds that special circumstances warrant a deviation from the general rules and the public interest would be better served by waiving prohibitions on these Class I and Class II permissive changes in these circumstances.” continues the notice.

The notice is narrow, though. It only covers already authorized devices, and grantees still have to follow the rest of the FCC’s rules, including the normal requirements for Class II permissive changes, test results, minimum performance, and certification statements. So this is relief, not a free pass.

The FCC also drew a line around what counts as covered hardware. For robots, the definition is broader than just “mobile robots” and excludes connected road vehicles, rail-only equipment, uncrewed aircraft, underwater vehicles, FDA-regulated medical and mobility devices, and fixed industrial arms like SCARA, gantry, and delta systems. For inverters, the rule covers systems that convert DC to AC or the reverse and include remote communication, control, sensing, data collection, or monitoring features.

“OET believes that analogous concerns regarding the continued safe operation of existing models of UAS, UAS critical components, and routers that OET described in the prior UAS Waiver and Router Waiver also apply equally to foreign-produced power inverters and advanced robotic devices.” states FCC. “Therefore, OET concludes that waiving our prohibitions with regard to software and firmware Class I and II permissive changes that mitigate harm to U.S. consumers for Covered Power Inverters and Covered Advanced Robotic Devices through at least January 1, 2029, is warranted and in the public interest.”

The FCC’s move is preventive, not reactive. It doesn’t name a confirmed active campaign against deployed robots or inverters, but it does rely on prior security research and supply-chain concerns to justify the action. That includes cases where researchers found exposure of camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, BLE attack paths, API-driven remote control, and inverter risks tied to remote access and grid instability.

“We clarify that this waiver only applies to the prohibitions on Class I or Class II permissive changes for already-authorized devices. Grantees whose devices are subject to this waiver must still comply with other relevant FCC rules.” concludes the notice.

The agency is also making clear that this is part of a wider pattern. The action follows earlier Covered List moves on foreign-produced drones and consumer routers, so the FCC is steadily using the same national-security framework across more device classes. The message is simple: if the device can be reached, updated, or remotely controlled, the supply chain is now part of the threat model.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Covered List)

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Google Fined €890M Under EU Digital Markets Act Over Search and Play Store Practices

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

EU fined Google €890M under the DMA for favoring its own services and restricting Play Store competition, with AI search features also under scrutiny.

The European Commission hit Google with two fines totalling €890 million on Thursday for violating the Digital Markets Act, one for giving its own services preferential placement in Google Search and one for blocking app developers from directing users to cheaper alternatives outside the Play Store. These are Google’s first DMA fines, but the fifth and sixth competition penalties against the company overall, bringing the cumulative total to €10.38 billion over nearly two decades. At this pace, Google is basically funding a small member state.

“Today, the European Commission took two decisions finding non-compliance by Google with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) for self-preferencing its own services on Google Search, and for putting in place restrictions on businesses to direct consumers to alternative, often cheaper, purchase channels on Google Play (steering).” reads the press release published by the European Commission. “In this regard, the Commission issued Google a fine of €460 million and a fine of €430 million respectively.”

The search fine covers Google’s handling of shopping, hotels, transport, and sports results, where the Commission found the company systematically promoted its own products over rivals. The Play Store fine targets steering restrictions that prevented developers from telling users they could buy the same app or subscription elsewhere for less.

Despite the scale of the penalties, the Commission signaled that ongoing daily fines for non-compliance are unlikely.

“The Commission notes that, after a constructive dialogue, Google has proposed and started testing changes to how it presents its own services on Google Search for free services such as shopping, hotels and flights.” EU continues. “The Commission will monitor the implementation of these solutions which constitute substantial progress towards compliance.”

The Commission described this as substantial progress and flagged a “constructive dialogue” with Google, which is regulatory language for “we’re not done but we’re not going to war either.”

Google has 60 days to comply with orders to treat rivals fairly and allow developers to redirect users away from the Play Store. The company rejected the findings and didn’t rule out taking the Commission to court. President of Global Affairs Kent Walker argued that complying would force Google to strip out real-time search features like hotel pricing and flight availability, and remove safety protections from the Play Store, framing the decisions as harmful to European users rather than protective of them.

“The Commission also notes that Google has proposed and started testing changes to how it presents shopping ads and content related services, such as sports.” states the press release. “The Commission is currently assessing these changes and will continue its dialogue with Google in light of today’s decision.”

That extension to AI features is the part of this decision that will matter most in the long run, as AI-generated summaries are increasingly becoming the first layer of search results that users interact with. The fines are the third under the DMA after Apple and Meta were penalized in April last year, and the U.S. government’s response was predictable.

Reuters reported that trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the actions are “driving massive uncertainty for U.S. exports.” though no specific retaliatory measures were announced.

“The two non-compliance decisions were adopted after a thorough investigation, including feedback from market participants, and extensive dialogue with Google.” concludes the press release. “When calculating the fines, the Commission has assessed the gravity, duration and recurrence of the breaches and concluded that the level of fines imposed are proportionate and appropriate.

Google may challenge today’s decisions in court.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, EU)

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Europe Confirms Record €4.1B Penalty Against Google for Android Practices

✇Security Affairs
Por:Pierluigi Paganini

EU’s top court upheld a €4.1B fine against Google, ruling it abused Android’s market dominance through restrictive licensing practices.

The Court of Justice of the European Union issued its ruling on July 2, 2026, and Google lost. The court dismissed the appeal brought by Google and its parent company Alphabet against an earlier judgment from the General Court, confirming a fine of €4,125,000,000. Alphabet is jointly and severally liable for €1,520,605,895 of that amount.

The case goes back to 2018, when the European Commission concluded that Google had abused its dominant market position through three categories of restrictions built into its Android licensing arrangements. Device manufacturers who wanted access to Google’s Play Store had to pre-install Google Search and Chrome. To get the licences needed for those apps, they also had to agree not to sell devices running Android versions that Google hadn’t approved. And Google paid manufacturers and mobile operators a share of its advertising revenue on the condition that they didn’t pre-install a competing search engine on a defined set of devices. The Commission concluded all three formed a single, coordinated strategy to protect Google’s search dominance, and fined the company €4,342,865,000.

The General Court reviewed the case in 2022 and agreed that the conduct was a single and continuous infringement. It annulled one piece of the Commission’s decision: the part dealing with revenue share agreements tied to the exclusive pre-installation of Google Search on a predefined device portfolio. That partial annulment led the court to recalculate the fine downward to €4.125 billion. Everything else held.

Google and Alphabet then appealed to the Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court, arguing the General Court had made legal errors in its analysis. The Court of Justice went through those arguments and rejected them all.

“The appeal brought by Google and its parent company Alphabet against the judgment of the General Court is dismissed, thereby confirming the penalty imposed for Google Search’s abuse of a dominant position in the context of the Android operating system.” the court’s press release states. “In 2018, the European Commission adopted a decision in which it concluded 1 that Google had abused its dominant position by requiring, in particular through pre-installation agreements and licensing conditions for certain apps, that its search engine, Google Search, and its Chrome browser be promoted on mobile devices running the Android operating system, which is also provided by Google. 2 It therefore found a single and continuous infringement covering the whole of that conduct and imposed an overall fine on Google of €4 342 865 000, with Alphabet jointly and severally liable as to €1 921 666 000.”

Google’s first argument was that the General Court assessed the anticompetitive effects of the pre-installation conditions incorrectly, in particular, that it should have run a counterfactual analysis to show what the market would have looked like without those conditions. However, the Court of Justice disagreed and confirmed the General Court was entitled to look at the full economic context, including the revenue share agreements, without needing to run a formal counterfactual test. The court also confirmed the finding that pre-installed apps enjoy a status quo bias, meaning users are less likely to switch away from them, and that Google hadn’t shown that user preferences or the quality of its services alone explained its market position.

On the pre-installation conditions specifically, Google argued that proving abuse of a dominant position requires showing the conduct could exclude competitors that are equally efficient. The Court of Justice rejected that too.

“Second, the General Court did not err in law by confirming the Commission’s assessment of the pre-installation conditions laid down by the Android agreements. Demonstrating an abuse of a dominant position is not conditional in any case on proof of a capability to foreclose only as-efficient competitors.” continues the press release. “Given the particular characteristics of the digital markets concerned, the General Court was entitled to conclude that those practices were liable to restrict competition and strengthen barriers to entry without applying that test.”

On the anti-fragmentation agreements, which required manufacturers to avoid selling devices running unapproved Android forks, the Court of Justice again sided with the General Court. Those agreements limited the commercial space for Android versions Google hadn’t blessed, which reinforced its dominant position. A counterfactual analysis wasn’t necessary because the anticompetitive effects were already sufficiently established on the facts.

Google also challenged how the fine was calculated, invoking procedural arguments including rights of defence. The Court of Justice endorsed the General Court’s use of its unlimited jurisdiction to set the penalty amount, ruling that the reasoning was sufficient and the procedural principles were respected.

“The Court of Justice endorses the exercise by the General Court of its unlimited jurisdiction to set the amount of the fine, ruling that its reasons were sufficient and that the procedural principles invoked by Google and Alphabet, including rights of defence, were adhered to.” states the report.

Google is disappointed with the ruling.

“We are disappointed with the ruling. Android has given people more choice, not less, enabling thousands of device makers to build affordable smartphones and giving billions of people access to a wide range of apps and services. We will review the judgment carefully.” the company said in a statement.

This is the end of the road for this particular case. The Court of Justice is the EU’s highest court on points of law. There’s no further appeal. The €4.1 billion fine stands, and the legal framework the Commission used to reach that conclusion has now been validated at every level of the EU court system.

The case also sets a precedent for how digital markets get treated under EU competition law. The court confirmed that the standard test used in traditional markets, whether conduct excludes equally efficient competitors, doesn’t automatically apply in digital contexts. That has implications well beyond Google. Any company with a dominant platform position in the EU now knows that structuring licensing arrangements to steer users toward its own products carries real legal risk, even if it can argue its products are genuinely better.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Google)

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