Tag Archive for: Injunction

Aussie law firm slaps hackers with injunction | Information Age


Man holding hand up in front of his face

Law firm HWL Ebsworth allegedly had 4TB of data stolen. Photo: Shutterstock

An influential Australian law firm is attempting to use the long arm of the law to stop hackers from publishing its stolen information and block media from publishing leaked data.

The attackers – Russian outfit known as Black Cat or AlphV – revealed it had stolen four terabytes of data from law firm HWL Ebsworth in April by publishing a Tweet stating that the firm had been added to its victim list.

According to media reports, the firm works for the Reserve Bank of Australia, Qatar Airlines and a number of government organisations.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that news of a potential hack sent shockwaves through the nation’s legal fraternity, and that attackers were claiming to have posted some of the data on the dark web.

It is not known whether the firm had received a ransom note.

HWL Ebsworth this week managed to obtain an injunction from the Supreme Court of NSW in an attempt to legally prevent hackers from disclosing its stolen information.

The injunction will also prevent media from reporting any details about the data.

Svenson Barristers senior silk Rodney Barrett KC says the victim of stolen information may have a case to prevent its publication by the media injunction.

“Conceivably, it may even be unconscionable for the media to publish stolen information that is not confidential. All will depend on the circumstances of the case.”

However, the injunction to block cyber hackers has been dubbed ‘futile’ by Professor and Associate Dean (Computer and Security) in the School of Science, Paul Haskell-Dowland.

“A criminal group that engages in illegal acts to obtain confidential data that they then go on to ransom is not likely to be deterred by such action – they already know what they are doing is illegal,” Professor Haskell-Dowland told Information Age.

Some smaller, less experienced criminal groups may be influenced by threats of legal action, but most will shrug off the risks and may even react more aggressively and publish stolen data more readily to ‘teach them a lesson’, he says.

“The idea that the injunction will ‘prevent’ the criminals from posting…

Source…

More Comic Conventions Change Their Names After Crazy SDCC Attorney’s Fees And Injunction Ruling

We were just talking about the odd ruling that came down in which the court overseeing the trademark dispute between the San Diego Comic-Con and the former Salt Lake Comic Con somehow awarded $ 4 million in attorney’s fees, despite the jury award for trademark infringement amounting only to $ 20k. In addition to the award of attorney’s fees, Judge Battaglia also issued an injunction barring the Salt Lake show from calling itself any variation of the term “comic con” but, oddly, refused to issue a similar injunction barring it from calling itself a “comic convention.” As we noted at the time, it’s plainly absurd that the “vention” difference there is doing that much heavy lifting in the court’s mind.

But the reverberations of the ruling are now being felt throughout the country, with one company that puts on many comic conventions doing sweeping name changes for many of its shows.

Tampa Bay Comic Con has changed its name to Tampa Bay Comic Convention. The change comes less than two weeks after a federal judge in California ordered organizers of Salt Lake Comic Con to pay nearly $ 4 million in attorneys’ fees and costs to San Diego Comic Convention in a trademark infringement suit.

Tampa Bay Comic Con co-founder Stephen Solomon, a manager at Imaginarium, the company that has run Tampa Bay Comic Con and similarly-branded comic conventions around the U.S. since 2010, confirmed the name change Wednesday after re-branded images appeared on the convention’s social media. Solomon declined to comment on whether that ruling had anything to do with the Tampa Bay Comic Con name change.

He can decline to comment on that all he wants, but it’s pretty plain what is going on here. Those putting on other comic conventions throughout the country have been keeping a watchful eye on the fight between SLCC and SDCC. With this enormous award of attorney’s fees after such a paltry judgement, convention organizers are simply doing the math and realizing that even if they convince a jury that its infringement isn’t willful in the future, they can still get slammed with attorney’s fees. They also likely know that after the ruling on the injunction that prevents SLCC from using any variation of the “comic con” term, the SDCC is surely coming for them next. And, so, they unilaterally disarm.

It’s at this point that I will insist again on pointing out how absurd every last bit of this is. To allow “comic con” to be a trademarkable term, but to admit that “comic convention” is not because of its descriptive nature, is so silly as to make one’s head hurt. For millions of dollars to be exchanged because of the difference between those two terms, all on the pretense that the public is somehow confused as to whether the SDCC is in charge of all of these conventions, is crazy-pants. For the result of all of this to be tens or hundreds of other conventions proactively changing their generic names to slightly more generic names is downright infuriating.

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