Cisco has been hit with a massive $1.9 billion patent-infringement bill for copying cybersecurity tech from Centripetal Networks and pushing the company out of lucrative government contracts. The Register reports: The network switch maker infringed four patents, a Virginia court decided on Monday, but since the infringement was "willful and egregious," the judge multiplied the $756 million owed by 2.5 to a total fine of $1,889,521,362.50. With interest, Cisco faces a hefty $1,903,239,287.50 bill "payable in a lump sum due on the judgment date," the court said. The four patents are: US 9,203,806, 9,560,176, 9,686,193, and 9,917,856.

That's not all: the court also imposed [PDF] a royalty of ten per cent of some of Cisco's products for the next three years, and five per cent for three years after that. That royalty must be at least $168 million and no more than $300 million for the first three years, and between $84 million and $150 million for the next three, the judge said. Even though the sums are massive, they are far from ruinous, and represent about three months of profit for Cisco. The networking giant also has a massive cash pile of roughly $30 billion that the total bill will barely eat into.

As for the tech itself, Centripetal Networks, based in Virginia, developed a network protection system that was in part funded by the US government. The patented parts of it deal with speed and scalability issues, and allowed for live updates and automated workflows. It outlined the technology to Cisco after the company had signed a non-disclosure agreement. But then Cisco simply stole the functionality and incorporated it into its own products in 2017. Centripetal sued [PDF] the following year. "The fact that Cisco released products with Centripetal's functionality within a year of these meetings goes beyond mere coincidence," said District Judge Henry Morgan in his judgment. He noted that Cisco had "continually gathered information from Centripetal as if it intended to buy the technology from Centripetal," but then "appropriated the information gained in these meetings to learn about Centripetal's patented functionality and embedded it into its own products."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The body tasked with oversight of the IRS announced in a letter that it will investigate the agency's use of location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on peoples' phones, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Motherboard. The move comes after Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren demanded a formal investigation into how the IRS used the location data to track Americans without a warrant. "We are going to conduct a review of this matter, and we are in the process of contacting the CI [Criminal Investigation] division about this review," the letter, signed by J. Russell George, the Inspector General, and addressed to the Senators, reads. CI has a broad mandate to investigate abusive tax schemes, bankruptcy fraud, identity theft, and many more similar crimes. Wyden's office provided Motherboard with a copy of the letter on Tuesday.

In June, officials from the IRS Criminal Investigation unit told Wyden's office that it had purchased location data from a contractor called Venntel, and that the IRS had tried to use it to identify individual criminal suspects. Venntel obtains location data from innocuous looking apps such as games, weather, or e-commerce apps, and then sells access to the data to government clients. [...] The IRS' attempts were not successful though, as the people the IRS was looking for weren't included in the particular Venntel data set, the aide added. But the IRS still obtained this data without a warrant, and the legal justification for doing so remains unclear. The aide said that the IRS received verbal approval to use the data, but stopped responding to their office's inquiries.

In honor of legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who tragically passed away today from throat cancer at the age of 65, we wanted to resurface an article Eddie wrote in 2015 for Popular Mechanics. While many know him as the guitar god, Eddie Van Halen was also an inventor and patent holder who has spent the better part of 35 years in his shop, rebuilding guitars and amps, searching for his signature sound. Here's an excerpt from the article: I've always been a tinkerer. It comes from my dad. Growing up, we lived in a house in Pasadena that had no driveway. You used an alley that ran through the middle of the block, behind all the houses, to get to your backyard or the garage. Well, the neighbor behind us had a U-Haul trailer up on car jacks and loaded with cinder block. One night my dad came home from a gig at three in the morning. He had a little heat going, he'd had a few drinks, so he says, "This thing is blocking me from getting in again." So he got out of the car and tried to move it. As soon as he lifted the trailer, the jack fell over, and it chopped his finger off. This was a problem. Besides the obvious reasons, he played clarinet and saxophone. On a sax, you don't need to seal the hole with your finger. A valve closes over it. But with a clarinet, you have to seal the hole, so he took a saxophone valve cover and adapted it to work on his clarinet.

Another funny thing was later in his life, when he started losing his teeth. You need your bottom teeth to play a reed instrument. Instead of going to the dentist, he made himself a perfectly shaped prosthesis out of white Teflon that filled the gap where his teeth were missing. He slipped that in when he had to play. Watching him do that kind of stuff instilled a curiosity in me. If something doesn't do what you want it to, there's always a way to fix it... Van Halen was an inventor on three patents related to guitars: A folding prop to support a guitar in a flat position, a tension-adjusting tailpiece, and an ornamental design for a headstock. Two of the three remain today.

Slashdot reader nicolaiplum shares the following news about his passing: Rock legend Eddie van Halen has died, aged 65, after a long battle with cancer. "In a band known for its instability -- due in part to a rotating cast of lead singers that most notably includes David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar -- Eddie Van Halen and his brother Alex remained constants, appearing on 12 studio albums that reached across five decades and sold tens of millions of copies," reports NPR.

The New York Times adds: "His outpouring of riffs, runs and solos was hyperactive and athletic, making deeper or darker emotions feel irrelevant. The band he led was one of the most popular of all time." This story is part of a new occasional article series we're calling Slashback. We'll be covering a topic that may not be breaking news, but is interesting to us.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A boy and his mother today filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo for not doing enough to fix a hardware problem common among Nintendo Switch controllers. It is one of several legal efforts related to the issue of "Joy-Con drift" -- a phenomenon where the Switch Joy-Con controllers make in-game characters "drift" even when nobody is moving them. The complaint, filed in Northern California, was brought by a woman named Luz Sanchez and her 9- or 10-year-old son, who, as a minor, is referred to in court documents as M.S. The complaint describes how Sanchez purchased her son a Nintendo Switch in December 2018, when he was 8. Within a month, the complaint alleges, Sanchez's controllers began registering in-game movement when his hands weren't on them. Less than a year later, it says, "the Joy-Con drift became so pronounced that the controllers became inoperable for general gameplay use." Sanchez's mom obligingly purchased another set of controllers, but seven months later, the complaint alleges, they began drifting too.

Joy-Con drift is pervasive among Switch devices. (Anecdotally, I've experienced it on two sets of my own controllers). Characters inch left or right as if a ghost was operating the console. Nintendo didn't acknowledge the problem much until July 2019. That month, a thread on the Nintendo Switch subreddit calling out Joy-Con drift received over 25,000 upvotes. More than a dozen Switch owners filed a potential class action lawsuit (PDF) at the time calling Joy-Cons "defective." Lawyers said Nintendo had heard users' complaints for long enough; why didn't the company disclose the issue? The 2019 lawsuit has been moved into arbitration, and the plaintiffs' lawyers recently asked Switch users to submit videos describing their experiences with Joy-Con drift to help bolster their case. Last month, a French consumer group filed a complaint, too, alleging planned obsolescence. Nintendo began fixing Joy-Cons for free, post-warranty, in July 2019, and Nintendo's president apologized for the problem in a financial meeting this summer. But Sanchez's lawyers argue that Nintendo hasn't done enough to fix the issue or warn customers about it up front.

Europe's top court has delivered another slap-down to indiscriminate government mass surveillance regimes. From a report: In a ruling today the CJEU has made it clear that national security concerns do not exclude EU Member States from the need to comply with general principles of EU law such as proportionality and respect for fundamental rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression. However the court has also allowed for derogations, saying that a pressing national security threat can justify limited and temporary bulk data collection and retention -- capped to 'what is strictly necessary.' While threats to public security or the need to combat serious crime may also allow for targeted retention of data provided it's accompanied by 'effective safeguards' and reviewed by a court or independent authority.

Aighearach shares a report from Reuters: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday sued John McAfee, creator of the eponymous anti-virus software, alleging that he made over $23.1 million in undisclosed compensation from recommending seven cryptocurrency offerings on Twitter that were materially false and misleading. The regulator, which is seeking a trial by jury, alleged that from at least November 2017 through February 2018, McAfee recommended cryptocurrencies that he was paid to promote, while falsely denying "he was being paid by the issuers." The SEC is seeking to impose on McAfee a civil penalty as well as disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, with interest. The agency also wants to ban him permanently from serving as an officer or director of any listed company or any company that files reports to the agency. "Poor John, surely he's misunderstood," writes Slashdot reader Aighearach. "John, come talk to us, do another Slashdot interview and tell your side! We're here for you, and we have people who can do your taxes while you..."

Slashdot reader Aighearach adds that McAfee is also facing charges for evading taxes and willfully failing to file tax returns. "John McAfee might not be able to give an interview about his SEC troubles after all, now that he's on his way to the Big House," writes Aighearach.

Engadget reports: Facebook is under intense regulatory pressure, and it appears to be bracing itself for the worst. The Wall Street Journal says it has obtained a document outlining Facebook's defense if the government orders a breakup that would unload Instagram and WhatsApp. The social media giant would reportedly argue that a split would be a "complete nonstarter" based on officials' past actions — or lack thereof.

According to the leak, Facebook would contend that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp passed FTC scrutiny without objections, leading it to pour massive amounts of money into both projects as it integrated them into its operations. A breakup would require spending billions and running separate systems that reduced security and hurt the user experience, Facebook would claim.

Facebook has declined to comment on the apparent leak. In the past, it has pushed for extra regulation (albeit limited) in place of a breakup.

On Friday America's Department of Justice announced: Two leaders of one of the world's most notorious videogame piracy groups, Team Xecuter, have been arrested and are in custody facing charges filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle... The indictment alleges the defendants were leaders of a criminal enterprise that developed and sold illegal devices that hacked popular videogame consoles so they could be used to play unauthorized, or pirated, copies of videogames. The enterprise targeted popular consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, the Sony PlayStation Classic, and the Microsoft Xbox.

"These defendants were allegedly leaders of a notorious international criminal group that reaped illegal profits for years by pirating video game technology of U.S. companies," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. "These arrests show that the department will hold accountable hackers who seek to commandeer and exploit the intellectual property of American companies for financial gain, no matter where they may be located."

"These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the work of other video-game developers — even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games," said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran for the Western District of Washington. "This conduct doesn't just harm billion dollar companies, it hijacks the hard work of individuals working to advance in the video-game industry."

"Theft of intellectual property hurts U.S. industry, game developers and exploits legitimate gaming customers, all of which threaten the legitimacy of the commercial video game industry," said Acting Special Agent in Charge Eben Roberts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, Seattle. "We are committed to working with our international partners to find criminals like these who steal copyrighted material and bring cyber criminals to justice...."

According to the indictment, Team Xecuter at times cloaked its illegal activity with a purported desire to support gaming enthusiasts who wanted to design their own videogames for noncommercial use. However, the overwhelming demand and use for the enterprise's devices was to play pirated videogames.

President Donald Trump has been flown to the hospital less than 24 hours after testing positive for COVID-19. The BBC reports: The White House said the decision to transport him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was taken "out of an abundance of caution." Mr Trump began exhibiting "mild symptoms" of Covid-19 on Thursday. He said early on Friday he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive. The White House said he was feeling "fatigued but in good spirits."

Wearing a mask and suit, Mr Trump walked out across the White House lawn on Friday afternoon to his helicopter, Marine One, for the short trip to hospital. He waved and gave a thumbs-up to reporters but said nothing before boarding the aircraft. In a video posted to Twitter, Mr Trump said: "I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support. I'm going to Walter Reed hospital. I think I'm doing very well. But we're going to make sure that things work out. The first lady is doing very well. So thank you very much, I appreciate it, I will never forget it -- thank you."

Grindr, one of the world's largest dating and social networking apps for gay, bi, trans, and queer people, has fixed a security vulnerability that allowed anyone to hijack and take control of any user's account using only their email address. TechCrunch reports: Wassime Bouimadaghene, a French security researcher, found the vulnerability and reported the issue to Grindr. When he didn't hear back, Bouimadaghene shared details of the vulnerability with security expert Troy Hunt to help. The vulnerability was fixed a short time later. Bouimadaghene found the vulnerability in how the app handles account password resets.

To reset a password, Grindr sends the user an email with a clickable link containing an account password reset token. Once clicked, the user can change their password and is allowed back into their account. But Bouimadaghene found that Grindr's password reset page was leaking password reset tokens to the browser. That meant anyone could trigger the password reset who had knowledge of a user's registered email address, and collect the password reset token from the browser if they knew where to look.

The clickable link that Grindr generates for a password reset is formatted the same way, meaning a malicious user could easily craft their own clickable password reset link -- the same link that was sent to the user's inbox -- using the leaked password reset token from the browser. With that crafted link, the malicious user can reset the account owner's password and gain access to their account and the personal data stored within, including account photos, messages, sexual orientation and HIV status and last test date.

President Trump said on Twitter that he and First Lady Melania tested positive for COVID-19. Slashdot reader halbot42 shares a report from The New York Times, adding: "President Trump? Karma calling on line 1." President Trump said early Friday morning that he and the first lady have tested positive for the coronavirus, throwing the nation's leadership into uncertainty and escalating the crisis posed by a pandemic that has already killed more than 207,000 Americans and devastated the economy. "Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter shortly before 1 a.m. "We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!"

The president's physician said Mr. Trump was "well" without saying whether he was experiencing symptoms and added that the president would stay isolated in the White House for now. "The president and first lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence," the physician, Sean P. Conley, said in a statement without saying how long that would be. "Rest assured I expect the president to continue carrying out his duties without disruption while recovering, and I will keep you updated on any future developments." Earlier in the day, one of his closest advisers, Hope Hicks, became infected.

US tech firm Palantir, known for supplying controversial data-sifting software to government agencies, has fetched a market value of nearly $22 billion in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The BBC reports: The firm, which launched in 2003 with backing from right-wing libertarian tech investor Peter Thiel and America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), builds programs that integrate massive data sets and spit out connections and patterns in user-friendly formats. The firm - sometimes described as the "scariest" of America's tech giants - got its start working with US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now supplies software to police departments, other public agencies and corporate clients. It is active in more than 150 countries, including the UK, where it was one of the tech firms the government enlisted this spring to help respond to coronavirus.

In the first half of 2020, Palantir revenue rose 49% year-on-year, topping $480 million. And at its direct listing on Wednesday, in which investors sold some of their existing shares to the public, shares opened at $10 each - above the $7.25 reference price -- giving it a value of roughly $22 billion. Mark Cash, equity research analyst at Morningstar, who has estimated the firm's value at $28 billion -- even higher than the valuation reached on Wednesday -- said the firm is well-positioned in a growing industry. "Data integration at this scale for the government is very complex and I think if you tried to stop spending on that and it just goes away, you're going to have some big problems," he said. "We think it's very hard to switch away from once you're in as a customer." Due to the use of its technology by immigration authorities in the U.S., Amnesty International issued a report (PDF) saying the firm was failing its responsibility as a company to protect human rights with inadequate due diligence into who it is working for.

"Palantir told Amnesty that it had deliberately declined some work with border authorities in the US due to the concerns," notes the BBC. "But the company has also vigorously defended its government work, maintaining that its clients own and control the data. It says it has a team focused on civil liberties issues, but it is government's job to craft policy, not Silicon Valley's."

Two RSS reader apps, Reeder and Fiery Feeds, said this week that their iOS apps have been removed in China over content that deemed "illegal" by the local cyber watchdog. TechCrunch reports: Apps get banned in China for all sorts of reasons. Feed readers of RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, are particularly troubling to the authority because they fetch content from third-party websites, allowing users to bypass China's Great Firewall and reach otherwise forbidden information, though users have reported not all RSS apps can circumvent the elaborate censorship system. Those who use RSS readers in China are scarce, as the majority of China's internet users -- 940 million as of late -- receive their dose of news through domestic services, from algorithmic news aggregators such as ByteDance's Toutiao and WeChat's built-in content subscription feature to apps of mainstream local outlets. Major political events and regulatory changes can trigger new waves of app removals, but it's unclear why the two RSS feed readers were pulled this week.

Inoreader, a similar service, was banned from Apple's Chinese App Store back in 2017. Feedly is also unavailable through the local App Store. The history of China's crackdown on RSS dates back to 2007 when the authority launched a blanket ban on web-based RSS feed aggregators. The latest incidents could well be part of Apple's business-as-usual in China: cleaning up foreign information services operating outside Beijing's purview, regardless of their reach.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: American authorities brought criminal charges on Thursday against the owners of one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency trading exchanges, BitMEX, accusing them of allowing the Hong Kong-based company to launder money and engage in other illegal transactions. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted the chief executive of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, and three co-owners: Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed and Gregory Dwyer. Mr. Dwyer was arrested in Massachusetts on Thursday, while the other three men remained at large, authorities said.

Prosecutors said BitMEX had taken few steps to limit customers even after being informed that the exchange was being used by hackers to launder stolen money, and by people in countries under sanctions, like Iran. "BitMEX made itself available as a vehicle for money laundering and sanctions violations," the indictment released on Thursday said. BitMEX has handled more than $1.5 billion of trades each day recently, making it one of the five biggest exchanges on most days. BitMEX and Mr. Hayes have been known for pushing the limits in the unregulated cryptocurrency industry.

After it was founded in 2014, BitMEX grew popular by allowing traders to buy and sell contracts tied to the value of Bitcoin -- known as derivatives, or futures -- with few of the restrictions and rules that were in place in other exchanges. That allowed investors to take out enormous loans and make risky trades. The relaxed attitude also made it possible for people all over the world to easily move money in and out of BitMEX without the basic identity checks that can prevent money laundering. In August, BitMEX put in place some of those verification checks.

Sonos has filed another patent lawsuit against Google, alleging that the search giant is infringing five wireless audio patents across the entire line of Nest and Chromecast products. From a report: Sonos filed its first patent lawsuits against Google in January in California federal court and with the International Trade Commission; the federal case has been put on hold while the ITC reaches a decision on whether to block Google's allegedly infringing products from market. The new case is filed only in the federal court for the Western District of Texas -- an emerging patent lawsuit hotspot -- and represents a more aggressive approach from Sonos. "We think it's important to show the depth and breadth of Google's copying," says Eddie Lazarus, Sonos' chief legal officer. "We showed them claim charts on 100 patents that we claimed they were infringing, all to no avail." Google, of course, says it will fight back; it has countersued Sonos in the initial case. "Sonos has made misleading statements about our history of working together," says Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda. "Our technology and devices were designed independently. We deny their claims vigorously, and will be defending against them."

Denmark said on Tuesday that it could reach its 2030 climate target of reducing emissions by 70%, one of the world's most ambitious, without compromising its generous welfare benefits. Reuters reports: Last year, parties across the aisle passed a law committing Denmark to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70% from 1990 levels, or around 20 million tons of CO2 equivalent, within 10 years. In a climate plan published on Tuesday, the government estimated that the annual cost of implementing the shift to greener technologies would rise to 16-24 billion Danish crowns ($2.5-$3.7 billion) by 2030 -- or 0.7%-1.0% of gross domestic product.

"Our ambitious climate goals are not without costs, but with a wise approach, the bill can be made smaller and managed so that we can afford both climate and welfare," Climate Minister Dan Joergensen said in a statement. Initiatives launched in the last year will cut around 5 million tons of CO2 equivalent, the government said. It said another 9-16.5 million tons could be cut by using new technologies such as carbon capture storage and 'power-to-X' - converting surplus electricity, usually from renewable sources such as wind, plentiful in Denmark, by using it to produce storable substances or fuels such as hydrogen or methane. The Danish Council on Climate Change, an independent adviser to the government, recommends sharply increasing the current carbon tax to get Denmark to meet its target.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Cloudflare is launching a privacy-friendly rival to Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free toolkit that's used by website administrators across the globe to help them track the behavior of the people visiting those sites -- how they find them, what they do there, the devices they're using, and so on. However, the service -- the most popular of its kind -- also helps Google track websites' visitors, so it can better profile them for advertising purposes. This privacy-invasive aspect makes many people squeamish. And that's where Cloudflare would now like to step in.

Around its birthday every year, the decade-old company -- which went public last year -- announces a move intended to "give back" to the wider Internet community. These moves are often related to privacy. On Tuesday, it unveiled Cloudflare Web Analytics, a free-to-use toolkit that largely replicates what Google Analytics offers -- minus the invasive tracking, and thus the ability to assess the performance of targeted ads carried on websites. Cloudflare Web Analytics is immediately available to the company's paid customers, but any website owner will be able to use it from some point in the coming months. Cloudflare's scale is crucial here [...] because it takes substantial resources to run a free analytics platform, and Cloudflare already has a giant network that can support the load. Cloudflare Web Analytics isn't the company's only big announcement this week. "On Monday, Cloudflare launched a beta testing program for a cloud technology called Durable Objects," the report adds. "You can read the technical explanation here, but in essence this is a tool that allows developers of online services to make those services comply with the increasing number of data-localization and data-protection laws that limit where users' data is supposed to go."

"With Durable Objects, Cloudflare says, it is possible to specify where particular data will reside on Cloudflare's network, so -- for example -- a German user's data does not have to leave Germany. Or, with an eye to other current news, a service such as TikTok could ensure that U.S. users' data never leaves the U.S., without having to create a separate version of its service for that country."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Last month, Las Vegas' largest public school district announced that a hacker compromised some of its files using ransomware and was holding the files hostage while demanding a ransom payment. Now, a hacker has published files containing students' grades and personal information after school district officials refused to pay the ransom.

Brett Callow, a threat analyst with cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, told Business Insider that he discovered leaked documents published to an online hacking forum that purported to include records from Nevada's Clark County School District, including students' names, social security numbers, addresses, and some financial information. Callow's findings were first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday. "Ransomware attacks happen for one reason, and one reason only: they're profitable," Callow told Business Insider. "The only way way to stop them is to make them unprofitable, and that means organizations must stop paying ransoms."

The San Diego Police Foundation, an organization that receives donations from corporations, purchased iPhone unlocking technology for the city's police department, according to emails obtained by Motherboard. From the report: The finding comes as activist groups place renewed focus on police foundations, which are privately run charities that raise funds from Wall Street banks and other companies, purchase items, and then give those to their respective police departments. Because of their private nature, they are often less subject to public transparency laws, except for when they officially interact with a department. "The GrayKey was purchased by the Police Foundation and donated to the lab," an official from the San Diego Police Department's Crime Laboratory wrote in a 2018 email to a contracting officer, referring to the iPhone unlocking technology GrayKey.

"The EULA I sent you [is] for a software upgrade that will allow us to get into the latest generation of Apple phones. Our original license was a 1 year license agreement paid for by the Police Foundation," the email adds. In a 2019 email, two other officials discussed purchasing the GrayKey for the following year. "This is the phone unlocking technique that the Police Foundation purchased for us (for 15k). Apparently the software 'upgrade' costs the same as the initial purchase each year. :/ They are the only ones that offer a tool that can crack iPhones, so they charge A LOT!," the email reads. Because police foundations act as private entities, they also do not directly fall under public records laws, meaning their expenditure or other activity may be more opaque than that of a police department itself. "Our end goal is to have an intervention on the funneling of private money into police forces and into policing," Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns at Color of Change, told Politico recently. "If the police foundations existed to raise money for the families of fallen police officers, we wouldn't say we need to abolish police foundations. It's the specific type of work that they're doing that we object to."

Universal Health Services, one of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S., has been hit by a ransomware attack. "Looks like another case of ransomware at over 400 hospital locations," writes Slashdot reader nickwinlund77. "They've had to go back to pen & paper for handling forms." TechCrunch reports: The attack hit UHS systems early on Sunday morning, according to two people with direct knowledge of the incident, locking computers and phone systems at several UHS facilities across the country, including in California and Florida. One of the people said the computer screens changed with text that referenced the "shadow universe," consistent with the Ryuk ransomware. "Everyone was told to turn off all the computers and not to turn them on again," the person said. "We were told it will be days before the computers are up again."

It's not immediately known what impact the ransomware attack is having on patient care, or how widespread the issue is. UHS published a statement on Monday, saying its IT network "is currently offline, due to an IT security issue." "We implement extensive IT security protocols and are working diligently with our IT security partners to restore IT operations as quickly as possible. In the meantime, our facilities are using their established back-up processes including offline documentation methods. Patient care continues to be delivered safely and effectively," the statement said. "No patient or employee data appears to have been accessed, copied or otherwise compromised," it added.