Techmeme: Sony Entertainment CEO blames theaters for cancellation of The Interview, still wants to release the film (Frank Pallotta/CNNMoney.com)

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December 20, 2014, 1:45 PM

Top News

BBC:

North Korea denies Sony hack, proposes joint inquiry with US, warns of “grave consequences” if Washington refuses — North Korea seeks join probe with US on Sony hack — North Korea has offered to hold a joint inquiry with the United States into a cyber-attack on Sony Pictures …

More: Guardian, Reuters, CBS News, USA Today, ABC, Engadget, No Film School, Deadline, Gizmodo UK, Forbes, Wired, Refinery29, CNN, The Huffington Post, TMZ.com and TechPresident. See also Mediagazer

Frank Pallotta / CNNMoney.com:

Sony Entertainment CEO blames theaters for cancellation of The Interview, still wants to release the film — Sony exec fires back at President Obama — Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, denying that the studio had “caved” by scrapping next week's opening of “The Interview,” …

More: Hollywood Reporter, ReadWrite, CNN, Business Insider, Engadget, Polygon, Raw Story, TechCrunch, Agence France-Presse, NBC News and Deadline. See also Mediagazer

Mike Lennon / SecurityWeek:

Hackers Used Sophisticated SMB Worm Tool to Attack Sony — Sony Hackers Used Server Message Block (SMB) Worm Tool — Just hours after the FBI and President Obama called out North Korea as being responsible for the destructive cyber attack against Sony Pictures, US-CERT issued an alert decribing …

More: US-CERT Alerts, Re/code, Ars Technica and CBS News. Thanks:@securityweek

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Sources confirm Sony hackers hail mainly from North Korea, and include Japan-based group of ethnic North Koreans

Dave Smith / Business Insider:

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi closing funding round topping $1B led by All-Stars Investment, valuing the company at $45B — The ‘Apple Of China’ Raises Over $1 Billion, Valuation Skyrockets To More Than $45 Billion — Xiaomi has reportedly raised more than $1 billion in its latest round of funding …

More: Wall Street Journal

Patricia Hurtado / Bloomberg:

Former BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem gets two years in prison for Silk Road money laundering — Bitcoin Promoter Gets 2 Years for Silk Road Money Laundering — Charlie Shrem, the former Bitcoin Foundation Inc. executive who pleaded guilty to charges tied to the illicit online bazaar …

More: Reuters, USA Today, Newsday, NY Daily News, CryptoCoinsNews, Inside Bitcoins and CoinDesk

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Chrome Security Team Considers Marking All HTTP Pages As ‘Non-Secure’ — Back in August, we noted that Google had started adjusting its search algorithm to give a slight boost to sites that are encrypted. That is, all else equal, sites that use HTTPS will get a slight ranking boost.

More: The Chromium Projects, BBC, Freedom to Tinker, Threatpost, SD Times, ECPM BLOG, ITProPortal, Accidental Tech Podcast, Datamation.com, The Register, eWeek, SecurityWeek, Inquirer, ZDNet and Search Engine Roundtable. Tweets: @stshank

Jan Dawson / Beyond Devices:

Cross platform development by Apple, Google, and Microsoft analyzed and visualized — Visualizing cross-platform development — Much has been made recently of Microsoft's shift from a Windows-centric worldview to a cross-platform approach to the development of applications and services.

Tweets: @animeshsriv, @benjaminellis, @chrisnahr and @stevesi

Mike Beasley / 9to5Mac:

Apple Pay claimed 1% of November's digital payment dollars, new report says — A new report from ITG has revealed that Apple Pay was responsible for 1% of the total digital payment dollars spent in November. The study also found that 60% of new Apple Pay customers used the service multiple times throughout …

More: Investor Relations, ZDNet, MacRumors, MacNN, The Mac Observer, SlashGear, AppleInsider and iMore

Alastair Sharp / Reuters:

BlackBerry building BlackBerry Enterprise Service into Boeing Black device, an Android phone which will self-destruct when tampered with — BlackBerry works with Boeing on phone that self-destructs — (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd is working with Boeing Co on Boeing's high-security Android-based smartphone …

More: Gizmodo, SlashGear and The Verge

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

India's e-commerce giant Flipkart raises $700M, bringing its total investor money in 2014 to over $2B — India's E-Commerce Giant Flipkart Replenishes Its War Chest With New $700M Round — Flipkart raised $1 billion at the end of July, and less than six months later the Indian e-commerce giant …

More: Times of India, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, NDTV Gadgets and NDTV Profit

Rachel King / ZDNet:

Cisco elevates patent battle against Arista with ITC complaint — Summary:Cisco's lawsuit concerns 12 features covered by 14 patents - all of which are embedded within current products. — The brewing legal war between Cisco and Arista gained momentum amid a battle of the blog posts on Friday.

More: Cisco Blog, Bloomberg, Business Insider, eWeek and Arista Networks

Phillip Inman / Guardian:

US tries to strike deal with EU for immunity over online security breaches — Critics fear Tisa talks could be used to further interests of large corporations and undermine right to privacy — The US is attempting to secure immunity from investigation for online security breaches …

More: Associated Whistleblowing …, The Register, Access Blog, Electronic Frontier Foundation and ComputerworldUK.com. Tweets: @vivianeredingeu

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