Hillicon Valley — Twitter gets a win against Musk with fast-tracked trial

Twitter’s lawsuit against Elon Musk is heading to trial in October after a judge handed the company a win in its quest to force Musk to complete the $44 billion acquisition.

In other news, the Department of Justice and the FBI disrupted ransomware operations of a North Korean state-sponsored group that targeted U.S. medical facilities, recovering roughly a half-million dollars in ransom payments. 

This is Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Send tips to The Hill’s Rebecca Klar, Chris Mills Rodrigo and Ines Kagubare. Someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.

Twitter-Musk trial scheduled for October

Twitter’s lawsuit seeking to force Elon Musk to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company will take place in October, a judge ruled Tuesday. 

The social media platform’s lawyers argued in Delaware Chancery Court that Twitter is being harmed each day that its dispute with Musk continues without a resolution and asked for a court date in September. 

• Musk’s lawyers contended that that expedited timeline would not give his team enough time to evaluate the data they’ve been given about the prevalence of fake accounts on the platform. 
  
• Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ultimately ruled in Twitter’s favor, setting up a five-day trial for October. 

“The longer the merger transaction remains in limbo, the larger a cloud of uncertainty is cast over the company,” the judge said. 

Read more here.

US recovers half a million in ransomware

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI disrupted ransomware operations of a North Korean state-sponsored group that targeted U.S. medical facilities, recovering roughly a half-million dollars in ransom payments made to the country, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced on Tuesday. 

Speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Security, Monaco said the seizure of the ransom payments — which she said were laundered through cryptocurrency — is the latest example of the DOJ’s approach to prioritizing the prevention of cyber attacks. 

• “This approach has yielded real results,” she said. “In the last year, those results — reflected in actions and disruptions — many of which began with critical reporting from and cooperation with companies who have been victims of cyberattacks.” 
  
• Monaco said a medical center in Kansas, which she did not name, was targeted by the ransomware from the North Korean state-sponsored group, which encrypted the hospital’s servers that store data and operate equipment.  

Read more here.

RUSSIA MALWARE APP USED AGAINST UKRAINIAN HACKERS

Russian hackers apparently disguised and advertised a malware-infected Android app as a tool to fight back against Moscow in an effort to expose Ukrainian hackers. 

Google’s Threat Assessment Group (TAG) released a report Tuesday explaining that Russians disguised the malicious app as one that would launch Denial of Service attacks on certain Russian websites — and distributed the app from a domain masked as an extension of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Regiment. 

The distributor, Turla, is a group TAG attributes to the Russian Federal Security Service. 

“Join the Cyber Azov and help stop russian aggression against Ukraine!” reads the advertisement on the third-party site distributing the apps, according to a screenshot shared by Google. “We have developed an Android application that attacks the Internet infrastructure of russia.” 

Read more here.

Amazon sues Facebook groups

Amazon said it filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against more than 10,000 Facebook group administrators for allegedly orchestrating fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products. 

Amazon said in a statement that it has reported more than 10,000 fake review groups to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and Meta has already taken down more than half of those groups for policy violations as it investigates others. 

“Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of selling partner services. “Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.” 

Read more here.

GOP ANTI-TRANSGENDER TWEET TO REMAIN ON TWITTER

Twitter is allowing several anti-transgender tweets from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that reference Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine to remain on its platform. 

In one tweet, Greene includes a clip of a video of Levine, who is transgender, during an MSNBC appearance in which the Biden administration official says, “We really want to base our treatment and to affirm and to support and empower these youth, not to limit their participation in activities to sports and even limit their ability to get gender affirmation treatment in their state.” 

In the tweet, Greene uses offensive language to refer to transgender reassignment surgery and also refers to Levine by her birth name. 

Read more here.

BITS & PIECES

An op-ed to chew on: A stand-alone CHIPS bill helps China by limiting US innovation 

Notable links from around the web: 

Leaked salary data show huge pay disparities at Twitter (Input / Chris Stokel-Walker) 

Facebook Internal Memo on Rivals Undercuts Antitrust Defense (Bloomberg / Leah Nylen) 

Amazon C.E.O. Andy Jassy Breaks From the Bezos Way (The New York Times / David McCabe and Karen Weise)

One more thing: Data bill on deck

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will markup the bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act Wednesday along with five other bills.  

The bill is backed by Committee Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). A Senate version of the bill is backed by Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) — but lack of support from Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) means its chances of moving forward in the Senate are slim.  

Last month the House Energy and Commerce Consumer Protection subpanel voted unanimously to advance the bill.  

The proposal aims to create national standard for how companies are able to collect and manage user data.  

Several changes have been made to the proposal ahead of Wednesday’s markup. One would allow for private right of action to be taken two years after the law is in effect, as opposed to the initially proposed four years. The four-year delay was a key criticism from Cantwell.  

The changes also give the California Privacy Protection Agency express authority to enforce the American Data Privacy Protection Act the way it would enforce the California Consumer Privacy Act.

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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