Ukraine isn't hesitating to point fingers following a major cyberattack that hobbled dozens of government websites. As The Guardianreports, Ukraine's digital transformation ministry has blamed Russia for the hack, accusing the country of fighting a "hybrid war" meant to "destabilize" an already tense situation and erode trust in the Ukranian government. While officials didn't elaborate on the evidence linking the attack to Russia, Microsoft shared details late Saturday that suggested a hostile nation was responsible.

The company's Threat Intelligence Center noted that the code was purely destructive malware disguised as ransomware. It had a ransom note, a Bitcoin wallet and an encrypted messaging identifier, but no recovery mechanism — in fact, it wipes the Master Boot Record (the hard drive element that tells a PC how to load the OS) and downloads malware meant solely to corrupt files. All known targets are in Ukraine, and there aren't any tangible links between this campaign and other groups.

Russia denied any involvement in the cyberattack. A spokesperson for President Putin said Ukraine pinned everything on Russia, "even the weather." Russia has long been accused of using cyberattacks to target its political opponents, including Ukraine, the US and European countries.

Microsoft said it wasn't certain about the current stage of the hacking operation or the scope of the damage. It wasn't yet clear if there were other victims in Ukraine or beyond. However, it's safe to presume the timing of the attack is problematic regardless of the perpetrator. Ukraine and its allies have been worrying for months about signs of a looming Russian invasion, and the US on January 14th claimed Russia was planning a false flag operation that would help it justify that invasion. The cyberattack appears to be exacerbating those tensions, and may have weakened Ukraine's government infrastructure at a critical moment.

Google may have to rethink its non-disclosure agreements following a long-running lawsuit from an anonymous worker. According to The Washington Post, a California Superior Court judge has ruled that Google's employee confidentiality agreements violate state labor laws. Terms banning the employee from discussing his job with potential employers amounted to a non-compete clause and were thus illegal in the state, the judge said.

The internet company originally persuaded a judge to toss out most of the worker's claims in the belief federal law overrode California legislation. An appeals court overturned that decision, however, noting that state laws did more to protect free speech rights that included work experience. Google has declined to comment on either the verdict or any plans to appeal.

The outcome wouldn't let Google employees discuss trade secrets if it was upheld. It would let people discuss work experience, though, and could make it easier for job-seekers to switch roles without fear of lawsuits. It might also provide more opportunities for sexual assault and harassment victims to discuss their reasons for leaving a company, although California legislation has already tackled non-disclosure agreements that bar victims from talking about incidents.

 This ruling might also have wider repercussions for California's tech sector. QH Law partner Ramsey Hanafi told the Post that many large tech companies have similar gag rules. Like it or not, Silicon Valley firms might have to revamp their agreements and accept that it will be easier for staff to leave or identify toxic work cultures.

The hacker behind the ransomware attack that took down the Colonial Pipeline last year has been apprehended by Russian authorities, according to US officials.

Russia’s FSB intelligence agency said Friday that 14 people associated with the REvil ransomware group had been arrested, according toThe Wall Street Journal. The group has taken responsibility for numerous cyberattacks in the US. Officials in the US believe the hacker behind the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline last spring was among those arrested, according to an unnamed administration official who spoke to CNN.

Last year’s cyberattack, which was attributed to a ransomware gang, caused a significant disruption to the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half of the fuel for the entire east coast of the US. The temporary shutdown of the pipeline incited mass panic buying at gas stations in and around the east coast of the US, which resulted in shortages in at least 11 states.

As CNN notes, the arrest comes after a week of diplomatic talks between the United States and Russia regarding Russia’s buildup of troops near the border with Ukraine. The Biden official told the network that it believes the arrest was “not related” to the situation. But some analysts have suggested otherwise, noting that this is the first first US investigation Russia has cooperated on in eight years.

Hackers have hit around 70 Ukraine government department websites, forcing many of them offline. A message in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish on the country's foreign ministry site reportedly read "Ukrainians! All your personal data has been uploaded to the public network. All data on the computer is destroyed, it is impossible to restore them.”

The page referenced "historical land" and featured crossed-out versions of Ukraine map and flag. "All information about you has become public, be afraid and wait for the worst. This is for you for your past, present and future," the message is said to have read. Along with the foreign ministry site, the state emergency service, state treasury and the ministries of education, foreign affairs, sport, energy, agrarian policy, veterans and environment were reportedly targeted.

However, Ukraine's security service told CNN that personal data was not affected. It noted that most services have been restored. 

According to the Ukrainian Information Ministry, early indications suggest the Russian Federation carried out the attack. "This is not the first time or even the second time that Ukrainian Internet resources have been attacked since the beginning of the Russian military aggression," the ministry said in a statement.

The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy suggested that references to Ukrainian ultra-nationalist groups in the message were an attempt by hackers to mask the "Russian footprint." The ministry added that "It is obvious that this was done on purpose to cast a shadow over the hacker attack on Poland: Russia and its proxies have been working for a long time to create the quarrel between two friendly neighboring countries."

Hackers believed to be from Russia have targeted other parts of Ukraine's infrastructure in recent years. In 2015, an attack took out parts of the power grid. Since then, Russia was also blamed for attacks on Ukraine's weapon supply and the Kiev airport. The NotPetya cyberattack, for which the US charged Russian hackers in 2020, impacted the Ukrainian government and banking system, a state power distributor and an airport, as well as entities in Russia and the US.

The latest attack took place as Russia mobilizes 100,000 troops to Ukraine's border. Western allies fear Russia will again invade Ukraine, following its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Attempts by the US, NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to de-escalate the situation in talks with Russia this week haven't proven successful. Russia’s lead envoy said the discussions hit a dead end.

Although Russia has denied plans to attack Ukraine, it said it may take action if its demands aren't met. Among those is an assurance that Ukraine and Georgia won't join NATO.

Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, condemned the cyberattack on Ukraine. He said NATO has been working with the country for years to bolster its cyber defenses and that the two sides will sign an agreement on enhanced cyber cooperation in the coming days. As part of that, the country will gain access to NATO’s malware information sharing platform.

Unless you’re a lawyer, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve never read through a website’s entire terms of service. There’s a simple reason for that. Far too often, they’re too long and difficult to parse. Some services offer summary statements, but they’re the exception, not the norm.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers made up of Representative Lori Trahan and Senators Bill Cassidy and Ben Ray Luján of Louisana and New Mexico want to change that. They’ve introduced the Terms-of-service Labelling, Design and Readability Act – that’s TLDR for short. Taking a page from Apple, the proposed legislation would require online businesses to include a “nutrition label-style” summary at the top of their terms of service agreements and make the contracts easy for researchers to examine through the use of XML tags. It would also require them to disclose any recent data breaches, as well as provide information on whether a user can delete their data and how they would go about doing that.

“For far too long, blanket terms of service agreements have forced consumers to either ‘agree’ to all of a company’s conditions or lose access to a website or app entirely. No negotiation, no alternative, and no real choice,” said Representative Trahan. The group cites a 2012 study that found it would take the average American 76 workdays to read all the terms of service contracts they’ve agreed to use their favorite online services as the basis for the need of the TLDR Act. Should the legislation pass, it would empower the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce it.

Nigerians can now access Twitter again without having to use VPNs or having to fear repercussions for doing so. The Nigerian government has lifted the ban on Twitter on January 13th, 2022, over seven months after it ordered telecom providers in the country to block the social network. According to CNN, Reuters and The Financial Times, Nigeria has decided to lift the ban after Twitter agreed to open a local office.

Twitter also had to agree to meet other conditions set by the government, including "managing prohibited publication in line with Nigerian law." The social network has to pay domestic taxes, as well, and to appoint a representative in the country who'll be in charge of engaging with local authorities.

If you'll recall, Nigeria originally suspended Twitter in June 2021 after the website removed a tweet made by President Muhammadu Buhari who used the platform to threaten citizens following attacks on government buildings. Back then, Twitter explained that the post violated its abuse policy. Nigerian authorities shot back by accusing Twitter of allowing its platform to be used "for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria's corporate existence." They also warned citizens that they would prosecute those who tried to circumvent the suspension by using VPNs and similar tools. Bloomberg reported back in October that Nigeria was already set to lift the ban, so long as Twitter is used in the country for "business and positive engagements," but it clearly took a few more months for the agreement to be finalized. 

Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director general of Nigeria's National Information Technology Development Agency, said Twitter "has agreed to act with a respectful acknowledgement of Nigerian laws and the national culture and history on which such legislation has been built." The social network has also apparently agreed to work with the country's government "to develop a Code of Conduct in line with global best practices, applicable in almost all developed countries."

With its landmark climate legislation in jeopardy, the Biden administration has announced a series of new executive actions to accelerate the US’s transition to a clean power grid. On Wednesday, the White House said it would allocate billions toward projects that lead to the construction of more wind, solar and geothermal energy across the country.

Specifically, the administration announced it’s moving forward with the lease of six commercial areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey for use in wind farm projects. On offer is more than 488,000 acres of ocean seafloor for the winning bidders to build an estimated 5.6 and 7 gigawatts of clean power generation. As part of the bidding process, the White House says it will incentivize participants to support labor jobs and to source turbine components from American manufacturers. The New York Bight development is one of the primary pillars of the Biden administration’s plan to build out 30 gigawatts of offshore wind production by 2030.

Another significant facet of today’s announcement is the “Building a Better Grid” initiative. Pulling from the $65 billion Congress set aside for power grid upgrades when it passed President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the initiative earmarks $2.5 billion toward funding the installation of new transmission lines. It’s putting another $3 billion toward an expansion of the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, which supports projects that increase the capacity and flexibility of existing electrical infrastructure.

The administration notes it will also allocate $10 billion in grants to states, tribes and utility companies to help those groups strengthen their local transmission lines. Taken together, the investments will help modernize the country’s power grid, making it easier to transport renewable energy from remote generation sites to where it’s needed most. It will also harden the power grid against the kind of extreme weather events that have become more commonplace as the effects of climate change have worsened.

Today’s announcement sees the White House putting forward meaningful climate policy, but if the Biden administration is to have a chance of meeting the president’s ambitious goal of decarbonizing the country’s power grid by 2035, it will need to bypass the legislative gridlock that has left the Build Better Back Framework in limbo. Much of that will depend on whether the White House can convince Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to support the approximately $1.75 trillion climate and social spending bill.

Coal should be going obsolete because renewable energy is becoming cheaper, but the US government is keeping it afloat with the promise of capturing carbon emissions and storing them underground. Now, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that federal agencies spent $684 billion on coal plant carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects that have mostly failed, Gizmodo has reported. It also spent $438 million on other three CCS industrial projects, two of which were cancelled.

"DOE [Department of Energy] provided nearly $684 million to eight coal projects, resulting in one operational facility," according to the GAO report. "DOE’s process for selecting coal projects and negotiating funding agreements increased the risks that DOE would fund projects unlikely to succeed."

DOE’s process for selecting coal projects and negotiating funding agreements increased the risks that DOE would fund projects unlikely to succeed.

Not only did the Department of Energy use a "high-risk selection" method to choose projects, it negotiated and funded them too expeditiously, according to the report. Coal negotiations lasted just three months instead of the usual year "based on DOE's desire to begin spending American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funds quickly." On top of that, it bypassed the usual cost controls and supported projects "even though they were not meeting required key milestones." 

The DOE recently said that it wants to dramatically reduce the cost of carbon capture technology via a program called Carbon Negative Shot. The aim is to remove CO2 directly from the air and sequester it underground at a cost of less than $100 per ton, deploying it at the gigaton scale. 

However, the easiest and cheapest way to cut gigatons of emissions would be to retire costly coal plants completely, according to a report last year the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena). That's because the costs of renewable energy have plunged in the last decade, making them effectively cheaper than coal. And of course, adding CCS tech to coal would increase costs considerably. All that said, coal and fossil fuels are a charged political subject in the US, despite the global risks of climate change. 

In the end, the GAO recommended more congressional oversight for DOE expenditures on CCS. "Absent such a mechanism, DOE is at risk of expending significant funds on CCS demonstration projects that have little likelihood of success."

It's now clear when Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama will vote in a mandatory second union election. As Motherboard's Lauren Kaori Gurley notes, the National Labor Relations Board has sent notice that employees at the BHM1 fulfillment center can start voting with secret mail ballots on February 4th, with the vote count beginning on March 28th. Anyone employed at the company from the first week of January 2022 onward is eligible to consider joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

The NLRB ordered the new vote after determining that Amazon interfered with the first union election in early 2021. The RWDSU filed 23 objections after the 1,798 to 738 "no" vote, accusing Amazon of installing an unapproved mailbox to intimidate staff as well as handing out anti-union material like badges and signs. After an investigation, the NLRB found that Amazon had a "flagrant disregard" for the mail voting process that made a fair election "impossible."

The RWDSU wasn't completely satisfied with the notice. In a statement, the organization claimed the NLRB's decision "fails to adequately prevent" Amazon from skewing the vote. Amazon, meanwhile, repeated its comment from November in response to Engadget's inquiries. It maintained that warehouse workers "overwhelmingly" voted against joining the union, and found it "disappointing" that the NLRB rejected the election.

As before, the stakes are high. A pro-union vote would give warehouse workers collective bargaining rights they could use to improve pay and working conditions — both frequent points of contention. Whatever the outcome, it's safe to presume the election will draw renewed scrutiny from politicians and stars who see it as a turning point for labor at the internet shopping giant.

GM has reversed course on its emissions policy, saying it now recognizes California's authority to set its own vehicle pollution standards, TechCrunch as reported. Previously, the automaker backed efforts by the former Trump administration to force the state to abandon its own standards in favor of federal emissions policies. However, it began to reverse course shortly after Biden was elected president, pulling out of the Trump administration's lawsuit against the state. 

As the most populous state with the strictest rules, California generally sets the emissions agenda for automakers and other states. Back in 2018, however, the Trump administration challenged California's ability to set its own rules independently from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Volkswagen, BMW, Ford and Honda agreed to work with California on voluntary targets, but GM, along with Fiat Chrysler and Toyota, sided with the Trump administration. 

"[GM] is committed to emissions reductions that are aligned with the California Air Resources Board's targets and... complying with California's regulations," GM VP Omar Vargas wrote in a letter to California governor Gavin Newsom. 

Because of its past decision to side with the Trump administration, GM was banned by California in 2019 for government fleet purchases. "Carmakers that have chosen to be on the wrong side of history will be on the losing end of California’s buying power," Newsom said at the time. Now, the state will allow GM to become a supplier, with Newsom welcoming the company to its "clean vehicle revolution." 

After defeating Trump, President Joe Biden announced a plan to accelerate a transition to EVs in order to combat global warming. GM followed those political winds, renouncing the earlier lawsuit and accelerating its own EV plans. The company now says it will stop selling ICE vehicles by 2040 and will spend $35 billion to develop EVs and self-driving cars by 2025. The company recently unveiled an electric version of its Silverado pickup designed to fight Ford's F-150 Lightning that's proved to be a hit with buyers.