SEATTLE – Starbucks said the aftermath of a ransomware attack on a software supplier has been affecting its ability to pay baristas and manage their schedules, the company’s spokesperson said on Nov 25.

The coffee giant said that an outage at a third-party vendor has disrupted a back-end Starbucks process that enables employee scheduling and time tracking.

The outage is not impacting its customer service, and the company was working to ensure its employees were fully paid for their hours worked with limited disruption or discrepancy, according to a Starbucks’ spokesperson.

UK-based Blue Yonder, which provides supply chain software to Starbucks and other retailers, according to the Wall Street Journal, said on Thursday that it has experienced disruptions due to a ransomware attack and it is working to fix the issue. REUTERS

LONDON – Britain’s media regulator Ofcom said on Oct 17 that it would detail what action it expected social media companies to take over illegal content on their platforms in December, saying it expected swift action or they would face consequences.

Ofcom, which is responsible for implementing the government’s Online Safety Bill, said the platforms would have three months to complete their own illegal harms risk assessments after the publication of its demands.

“The time for talk is over,” Ofcom’s Chief Executive Melanie Dawes said on Oct 17. “From December, tech firms will be legally required to start taking action, meaning 2025 will be a pivotal year in creating a safer life online.”

She said the regulator had already seen positive changes, but expectations were going to be high.

“We’ll be coming down hard on those who fall short,” she said.

Ofcom said better protections had already been introduced by Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and Snapchat which have brought in changes to help prevent children being contacted by strangers.

Britain’s new online safety regime, which became law last year, requires social media companies to tackle the causes of harm, particularly for children, by making their services safer.

If companies do not comply with the new law, they could face significant fines and, in the most serious cases, their services could be blocked in Britain. REUTERS

WASHINGTON – Members of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s family and officials from the Biden administration were among those targeted by China-linked hackers who were able to break into telecommunications company systems, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Times said State Department officials, Trump family members including Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, and prominent Democrats including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer were among those targeted by the spies.

Concerns about the hacking group have grown since media reports disclosed its activities last month.

On Oct. 6, the Wall Street Journal reported that the group, nicknamed “Salt Typhoon”, had accessed the networks of broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping.

The State Department, as well as aides for Trump family members, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions. The White House, the National Security Agency, and the cybersecurity watchdog agency CISA did not immediately return messages. A Schumer aide did not immediately reply to an email. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an email, although Beijing routinely denies being behind cyberespionage campaigns. REUTERS

HELSINKI – A fibre optic communications cable linking Finland and Germany along the seabed has stopped working and may have been severed by an outside force, Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms network company Cinia said on Monday.

The 1,200 km (745 miles) C-Lion1 cable running through the Baltic Sea from Finland’s capital Helsinki to the German port of Rostock malfunctioned just after 0200 GMT, the company said.

The sudden outage implied that the cable was completely severed by an outside force, although a physical inspection has not yet been conducted, Cinia’s Chief Executive Ari-Jussi Knaapila told a press conference.

The damage occurred near the southern tip of Sweden’s Oland island and could typically take between five and 15 days to repair, he added.

Cinia said it was working with authorities to investigate the incident.

Last year a subsea gas pipeline and several telecoms cables running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea were severely damaged in an incident raising alarm bells in the region.

Finnish police investigating the 2023 case have named a Chinese container ship believed to have dragged its anchor as a prime suspect, but have not said whether the damage was believed to be accidental or done with intention.

In 2022 the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany in the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explosions in a case that remains under investigation by German authorities. REUTERS

An Iranian hacking group is actively scouting U.S. election-related websites and American media outlets as election day nears, according to a new Microsoft blog published on Wednesday. Researchers say the activity suggests “preparations for more direct influence operations.”

The hackers – dubbed Cotton Sandstorm by Microsoft and linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – performed reconnaissance and limited probing of multiple “election-related websites” in several unnamed swing states, the report notes. In May, they also scanned an unidentified U.S. news outlet to understand its vulnerabilities.

“Cotton Sandstorm will increase its activity as the election nears given the group’s operational tempo and history of election interference,” researchers wrote. The development is particularly concerning because of the group’s past efforts.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In recent past comments, they denied any involvement in 2024 election-related hacking activity.

In 2020, Cotton Sandstorm launched a different cyber-enabled influence operation shortly before the last presidential election. Posing as the right-wing “Proud Boys,” the hackers sent thousands of emails to Florida residents, threatening them to “vote for Trump or else!”.

The group also released a video on social media, purporting to come from hacktivists, where they showed them probing an election system. While that operation never affected individual voting systems, the goal was to cause chaos, confusion and doubt, senior U.S. officials said at the time.

Following the 2020 election, Cotton Sandstorm also ran a separate operation that encouraged violence against U.S. election officials who had denied claims of widespread voter fraud, Microsoft said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is coordinating the federal effort to defend the election from foreign influence, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. REUTERS

DUBLIN – Ireland’s data protection commission has fined LinkedIn €310 million (S$442 million) for illegally processing the personal data of users within the European Union to deliver targeted advertising.

The decision also includes an order for Microsoft Corp-owned LinkedIn to bring its data processing into compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to a statement by the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) on Oct 24. 

Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement that LinkedIn’s processing of personal data without an appropriate legal basis was a “clear and serious violation of data subjects’ fundamental right to data protection”.

It is the sixth-largest fine to be issued under GDPR since it was introduced in 2018.

The Irish regulator has issued hefty fines to several social media companies for GDPR violations in recent years.

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc has faced the brunt of the penalties, including a record €1.2 billion charge in May 2023 for transferring EU users’ data to the US. The commission fined ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok €345 million in September 2023 over its handling of children’s data.

It is part of a broader crackdown on Big Tech companies by the EU over a range of issues including data privacy, competition and disinformation.

LinkedIn said the case relates to claims from 2018 about some of its digital advertising efforts in the EU. 

“While we believe we have been in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are working to ensure our ad practices meet this decision by the IDPC’s deadline,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Ireland’s data protection commission launched an inquiry into LinkedIn’s data processing practices following a complaint made to the French data regulator. LinkedIn, like many other big tech companies, has its European headquarters in Ireland, which means that local regulators are tasked with enforcing EU rules. BLOOMBERG