Apple Inc customers were targeted by hackers over the weekend in the first campaign against Macintosh computers using a pernicious type of software known as ransomware, researchers with Palo Alto Networks Inc told Reuters on Sunday.
Ransomware, one of the fastest-growing types of cyber threats, encrypts data on infected machines, then typically asks users to pay ransoms in hard-to-trace digital currencies to get an electronic key so they can retrieve their data.
Security experts estimate that ransoms total hundreds of millions of dollars a year from such cyber criminals, who typically target users of Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system.
Palo Alto Threat Intelligence Director Ryan Olson said the "KeRanger" malware, which appeared on Friday, was the first functioning ransomware attacking Apple's Mac computers.
"This is the first one in the wild that is definitely functional, encrypts your files and seeks a ransom," Olson said in a telephone interview.
An Apple representative said the company had taken steps over the weekend to prevent attacks by revoking a digital certificate from a legitimate Apple developer that enabled the rogue software to install on Macs. The representative said he could not immediately provide other details.
The malware is programmed to encrypt files on an infected personal computer three days after the original infection, according to Olson.
That means that if Apple's steps prove ineffective in neutralizing malware that has already infected Macs, the earliest victims will have their files encrypted on Monday, three days after the malicious program first appeared on the Tranmission website, he said.
The Transmission site offers the open source software that was infected with the ransomware.
Palo Alto said it planned to release a blog advising Mac users on ways to check to see if they were infected with the virus and steps they can take to protect against it harming their data, Olson said.
Transmission is one of the most popular Mac applications used to download software, videos, music and other data through the BitTorrent peer-to-peer information sharing network, according to Olson.
Representatives with Transmission could not be reached immediately for comment.
The project's website, www.transmissionbt.com, on Sunday carried a warning saying that version 2.90 of its Mac software had been infected with malware.
It advised users to immediately upgrade to version 2.91 of the software, which was available on its website, or delete the malicious one.
It also provided technical information on how users could check to see if they were affected.
China aims to become a world leader in advanced industries such as semiconductors and in the next generation of chip materials, robotics, aviation equipment and satellites, the government said in its blueprint for development between 2016 and 2020.
In its new draft five-year development plan unveiled on Saturday, Beijing also said it aims to use the internet to bolster a slowing economy and make the country a cyber power.
Innovation is the primary driving force for China's development, Premier Li Keqiang said in a speech at the start of the annual full session of parliament.
China is hoping to marry its tech sector's nimbleness and ability to gather and process mountains of data to make other, traditional areas of the economy more advanced and efficient, with an eye to shoring up its slowing economy and helping transition to a growth model that is driven more by services and consumption than by exports and investment.
This policy, known as "Internet Plus", also applies to government, health care and education.
As technology has come to permeate every layer of Chinese business and society, controlling technology and using technology to exert control have become key priorities for the government.
China will implement its "cyber power strategy", the five-year plan said, underscoring the weight Beijing gives to controlling the Internet, both for domestic national security and the aim of becoming a powerful voice in international governance of the web.
China aims to increase Internet control capabilities, set up a network security review system, strengthen cyberspace control and promote a multilateral, democratic and transparent international Internet governance system, according to the plan.
Since President Xi Jinping came to power in early 2013, the government has increasingly reined in the Internet, seeing the web as a crucial domain for controlling public opinion and eliminating anti-Communist Party sentiment.
China will "strengthen the struggle against enemies in online sovereign space and increase control of online public sentiment," said the plan.
It will also "perfect cybersecurity laws and legislation".
Such laws and regulations have sparked fear amongst foreign businesses operating in China, and prompted major powers to express concern to Beijing over three new or planned laws, including one on counterterrorism.
These laws codify sweeping powers for the government to combat perceived threats, from widespread censorship to heightened control over certain technologies.
(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Kim Coghill)
An FBI demand that Apple unlock an iPhone risks setting a dangerous precedent that could have a chilling effect on human rights, the United Nations rights chief warned Friday.
Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein's intervention came after Apple's largest rivals backed the tech giant's bid to resist the US government demand seeking to access the iPhone used by one of the attackers in a deadly rampage in San Bernardino, California in December.
"In order to address a security-related issue related to encryption in one case, the authorities risk unlocking a Pandora's Box that could have extremely damaging implications for the human rights of many millions of people, including their physical and financial security," Zeid said in a statement.
He warned that the FBI order would "set a precedent that may make it impossible for Apple or any other major international IT company to safeguard their clients' privacy anywhere in the world".
The FBI wants to unlocked the iPhone used by Syed Farook, who was behind the San Bernardino massacre along with his wife Tashfeen Malik that left 14 people dead.
The agency has argued that by introducing encryption that can lock data, making it accessible only to the user, Apple and other tech companies are essentially creating "warrant-proof zones" for criminals and others that will cripple law enforcement and jeopardise public security.
Apple has in return said that the only way to unlock the handset would be to introduce a weakened operating system, which could potentially leak out and be exploited by hackers and foreign governments.
Zeid said the FBI "deserves everyone's full support" in its investigation into what he described as an "abominable crime".
- 'Gift to authoritarian regimes' -
But he added: "This case is not about a company -– and its supporters -- seeking to protect criminals and terrorists, it is about where a key red line necessary to safeguard all of us from criminals and repression should be set.
"There are many ways to investigate whether or not these killers had accomplices besides forcing Apple to create software to undermine the security features of their own phones.
"It is potentially a gift to authoritarian regimes, as well as to criminal hackers."
Zeid said encryption tools were widely used around the world, including by human rights defenders, civil society, journalists, whistle-blowers and political dissidents facing persecution and harassment.
"Encryption and anonymity are needed as enablers of both freedom of expression and opinion, and the right to privacy. Without encryption tools, lives may be endangered."
Three tech associations representing Apple's main business rivals -- including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo -- said Thursday they supported Apple's efforts to challenge the order.
"If the government arguments prevail, the Internet ecosystem will be weakened, leaving Internet users more vulnerable to hackers and other bad actors," said a statement from the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which announced the joint brief with the Internet Association and the i2Coalition of Internet infrastructure firms.
But relatives of some of the San Bernardino victims backed the FBI bid in a legal brief filed in the court where the case is being heard.
They said Apple wanted to portray the debate as "one in which the privacy interests of millions of Americans are at stake in order to obtain sympathy for its cause."
"What is implicated here is the United States' ability to obtain and execute a valid warrant to search one phone used by a terrorist who committed mass atrocities," the brief said.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the city of Seattle on Thursday over an ordinance that allows drivers of ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft to unionize, saying it violates federal antitrust laws.
Seattle last year became the first U.S. city to pass a law giving drivers for companies such as Uber and Lyft, as well as taxi and for-hire drivers, the right to collectively negotiate on pay and working conditions.
City officials took action amid growing concerns about how drivers are compensated. Both Uber and Lyft vigorously opposed the measure, arguing that existing federal labor law trumps local legislation.
The chamber, a federation of more than 3 million businesses, is the newest entry into the growing legal battle being waged by numerous factions in courts across the United States over whether the drivers are independent contractors or employees, and what sort of benefits and rights they should have.
"Seattle and thousands of other municipalities would be free to adopt their own disparate regulatory regimes, which would ... inhibit the free flow of commerce among private service providers around the Nation," according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
The chamber is seeking to have the law suspended.
Uber said in a statement that the lawsuit "raises serious questions not only about whether the city has run afoul of federal laws, but also about the impact on drivers who rely on ride-sharing to earn flexible income.”
Lyft, in a separate statement, said the ordinance "may undermine the flexibility that makes Lyft so attractive both to drivers and passengers."
The ordinance was approved unanimously by the city council but opposed by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray.
Representatives for Seattle's city council could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday; officials said in December they were prepared for a lawsuit.
"We have millions of dollars set aside," Councilman Mike O'Brien, who proposed the measure, told Reuters.
Richard Reibstein, a labor lawyer who runs the independent contractor practice at Pepper Hamilton, said the law is a threat to all the businesses the chamber represents.
"If a municipality could pass an ordinance of this nature addressed to the ride-sharing industry, it could pass an ordinance of this nature against any industry and all industries," he said.
The chamber also argues that Seattle cannot make a determination about the employment status of drivers before the National Labor Relations Board makes a decision on the issue. The NLRB is reviewing at least four cases and is expected to make a blanket decision concerning their status.
(Reporting by Heather Somerville and Dan Levine in San Francisco; editing by Grant McCool)
The Pentagon said on Wednesday it would invite outside hackers who have been vetted to test the cyber security of some public U.S. Defense Department websites as part of a pilot project next month, the first such program ever by the federal government.
"Hack the Pentagon" is modeled after similar competitions known as "bug bounties" conducted by many large U.S. companies, including United Continental Holdings Inc, to discover security gaps in their networks.
Such programs allow cyber experts to find and identify problems before malicious hackers can exploit them, saving money and time in the event of damaging network breaches.
"I am confident that this innovative initiative will strengthen our digital defenses and ultimately enhance our national security," Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement unveiling the pilot program.
He told reporters it was time for the Pentagon to learn from best practices used widely across industry, especially since the military was "not getting good grades across the enterprise" for its current level of cyber security.
"We can’t just keep doing what we’re doing. The world changes too fast; our competitors change too fast," he during a public discussion at the RSA conference.
The Pentagon has long tested its own networks using internal so-called "red teams," but this initiative would open at least some of the department's vast network of computer systems to cyber challenges from across industry and academia.
Participants must be U.S. citizens and will have to register and submit to a background check before being turned loose on a predetermined public-facing computer system, the Pentagon said. It said other more sensitive networks or key weapons programs would not be included, at least initially.
"The goal is not to comprise any aspect of our critical systems, but to still challenge our cyber security in a new and innovative way," said the official.
The initiative is being led by the Pentagon's Defense Digital Service (DDS), which was set up last November to bring experts from the U.S. technology industry into the military for short stints.
"Bringing in the best talent, technology and processes from the private sector ... helps us deliver comprehensive, more secure solutions to the DOD," said Chris Lynch, a former Microsoft executive and technology entrepreneur who heads DDS.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Paul Tait and David Gregorio)
“22 of the Cutest Baby Animals,” the headline said. “You won’t believe number 11!”
Despite an impending deadline – not to mention my skepticism (how cute could they possibly be?) – I clicked on the story. I’m only human, after all. Yet this failure in self-regulation cost me at least half an hour of good work time – as have other clickbait headlines, bizarre images on my Twitter feed or arguments on Facebook.
The insidious, distracting suck of the Internet has become seemingly inescapable. Calling us from our pockets, lurking behind work documents, it’s merely a click away. Studies have shown that each day we spend, on average, five and a half hours on digital media, and glance at our phones 221 times.
Meanwhile, the developers of websites and phone apps all exploit human behavioral tendencies, designing their products and sites in ways that attract our gaze – and retain it. Writing for Aeon, Michael Schulson points out:
Developers have staked their futures on methods to cultivate habits in users, in order to win as much of that attention as possible.
Given the Internet’s omnipresence and its various trappings, is it even possible to rein in our growing Internet consumption, which often comes at the expense of work, family or relationships?
Psychological research on persuasion and self-control suggests some possible strategies.
Tricks for clicks
It’s important to realize some of the tricks that Internet writers and web developers use to grab our attention.
The strange number 22 in the headline is an example of the “pique” technique. Lists are usually round numbers (think of Letterman’s Top 10 lists or the Fortune 500). Unusual numbers draw our attention because they break this pattern. In a classic study, the social psychologist Anthony Pratkanis and colleagues found that passersby were almost 60 percent more likely to give money to panhandlers asking for US$0.37 compared to those who were asking for a quarter.
People in the study also asked more questions of the panhandlers who requested strange amounts, compared to those who begged for a quarter. The same thing happened when I saw the headline. In this case, the skepticism that caused me to ask the question “How cute could they possibly be?” backfired: it made me more likely to click the link.
An attention pique (such as asking for $0.37 or calling out photo #11) triggers us to halt whatever we’re doing and reorient to the puzzle. Questions demand answers. This tendency has been dubbed by psychologists as the rhetorical question effect, or the tendency for rhetorical questions to prompt us to dig deeper into an issue.
These tricks exploit built-in features of our minds that otherwise serve us well. It’s clearly advantageous that unexpected stimuli capture our attention and engage us in a search for explanation: it might stop us from getting hit by a car, or alert us to sudden and suspicious changes to the balance in our bank account.
So it wouldn’t make sense to turn off that kind of vigilance system or teach ourselves to ignore it when it sounds an alarm.
Binding ourselves to the mast
Content on the net isn’t only designed to grab our attention; some of it is specifically built to keep us coming back for more: notifications when someone replies to a posts, or power rankings based on up-votes. These cues trigger the reward system in our brains because they’ve become associated with the potent reinforcer of social approval.
Not surprisingly, Internet use is often framed in the language of addiction. Psychologists have even identified Problematic Internet Use as a growing concern.
So what can we do?
Like Odysseus' strategy for resisting the temptation of the sirens, perhaps the best trick is to commit ourselves to a different course of action in advance – with force, if necessary.
Odysseus had his men tie him to the mast of their ship until they were out of the sirens' range. This is an example of “precommitment,” a self-control strategy that involves imposing a condition on some aspect of your behavior in advance. For example, an MIT study showed that paid proofreaders made fewer errors and turned in their work earlier when they chose to space out their deadlines (e.g., complete one assignment per week for a month), compared to when they had the same amount of time to work, but had only one deadline at the end of a month.
John William Waterhouse’s ‘Ulysses and the Sirens’ (1891).
The modern-day equivalent of what Odysseus did is to use technology to figuratively bind oneself to the mast. Software packages such as Cold Turkey or the appropriately named SelfControl allow you to block yourself out from certain websites, or prevent yourself from signing onto your email account for a prespecified period of time.
Researchsupports the reasoning behind these programs: the idea that we often know what’s best for our future selves – at least, when it comes to getting work done and staying free of distraction.
Coming out with your commitment
If you really must win a game of chicken, the best way is to accelerate to top speed, remove the steering wheel and brake from your car, and throw them out the window – all in view of your opponent.
In a less dramatic fashion, precommitments can be much more effective when they’re announced in public. Researchers have found that people who publicly commit to a desired course of action such as recycling or being sociable are more likely to follow through than people who keep their intentions private. We are deeply social creatures with a fundamental need to belong, and publicly declaring a plan puts one’s reputation at stake. Between the social pressure to live up to expectations and any internal sanctions we self-impose, public precommitment can be a powerful two-pronged attack against self-control failure.
More and more, scientists who study self-control are starting to see tools such as precommitment and software that blocks out websites not as “hacks” that circumvent the system but instead as integral pieces in the self-control puzzle.
For example, a recent study tracked the everyday lives of a large sample of people on a moment-by-moment basis, asking them questions about their goals, temptations and abilities to resist them.
Contrary to expectations, the people who were generally good at self-control (measured with a reliable questionnaire) were not the best at resisting temptations when the temptation presented itself. In fact, they were generally pretty bad at it.
The key is that self-control and resisting temptation are not the same thing. Odysseus had one, but not the other.
Instead, good self-control was characterized by the ability to avoid temptations in the first place. We often think of self-control as the ability to white-knuckle our way through temptation, but studies such as this one indicate that self-control can also be as simple as planning ahead to avoid those traps.
The next time you need to get something done, consider precommitting to avoiding the Internet altogether. Like Odysseus, realize that if you find yourself facing temptation directly, the battle may already be lost.
Officials at the University of California Berkeley said on Friday that they were alerting 80,000 people, including current and former students, faculty and vendors of a cyber attack on a system that stores social security and bank account numbers.
The news comes just more than a week after a Southern California hospital paid hackers $17,000 in the digital currency Bitcoin to regain control of their computer systems after a so-called "ransomware" attack.
The San Francisco Bay Area university said there was no evidence that attackers actually took any personal information, but that it was still alerting the 80,000 individuals to be on the lookout for misuse of their information.
The school said a hacker or hackers gained access to its financial management software in late December due to a security flaw present when the system is updating. Officials have notified law enforcement, including the FBI, and hired a private computer investigation company.
The university said among the potentially affected are 57,000 current and former students; about 18,800 former and current employees; and 10,300 vendors who work with the school. Those figures come out to about half of the school's current students and two-thirds of its active employees.
Large, high-profile organizations and businesses routinely come under cyber attack, and the school said it frequently identifies similar hacking attempts.
"The security and privacy of the personal information provided to the university is of great importance to us," Paul Rivers, UC Berkeley's chief information security officer, said in a statement. "We regret that this occurred and have taken additional measures to better safeguard that information."
The school said it was providing credit protection service free of charge to those potentially impacted.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sharon Bernstein)
The new law means adolescents caught sharing explicit photos with each other will no longer risk charges, prison sentences and a damaging criminal record
New Mexico teenagers can now exchange nude photos without fear of criminal prosecution under a new bill that legalizes sexting and could have national implications for laws on child abuse images.
Governor Susana Martinez, a Republican, signed into law a proposal that allows people aged 14 to 18 to engage in consensual sexting, which means adolescents caught sharing explicit photos with each other will no longer risk facing “child pornography” charges, prison sentences and a damaging criminal record.
“Kids will be kids, and they’re going to make mistakes,” said state senator George Muñoz, a Democrat who authored the legislation exempting sexting from child exploitation laws. “You can’t punish them for the rest of their lifetime with a charge of child pornography … if they’re consensually sending photos back and forth.”
The bill, which sparked opposition from the state’s attorney general, stemmed from concerns that prosecutors have increasingly charged teenagers with harsh charges for texting lewd photos to each other – a practice that studies have shown is now very common in the smartphone age. Researchers have also found that a majority of adolescents are unaware of the potentially serious legal consequences of sexting.
“Most people, from a commonsense perspective, agree that this is not behavior that should be criminalized,” said Steven Robert Allen, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, which helped craft the legislation. “It’s misguided behavior and certainly something where parents should get involved. But kids shouldn’t be charged … It’s just absurd.”
Before the law was passed on Thursday, if minors in New Mexico were caught sexting – typically with a parent discovering photos on a child’s phone and then reporting it to the authorities – the youth could face charges of possessing, distributing and manufacturing child abuse images.
Prosecutors previously could also file separate charges for each individual image, meaning teens who rapidly exchanged dozens of photos via texts or other smartphone messaging applications could potentially be sentenced to significant prison sentences, said Rikki-Lee Chavez, legislative coordinator for the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, which also supported the measure.
“Teens in the sexting context could be facing huge amounts of time for a bad decision that is common practice for kids now,” Chavez said.
Because juvenile records are sealed, Chavez said there isn’t reliable data on how frequently teens were being charged for sexting and whether the cases resulted in convictions. But she said defense lawyers reported that they were representing teens charged with child sexual exploitation for actions that clearly constituted sexting.
One case, Chavez said, involved a teen who had shared images through Yik Yak, a mobile app that allows for anonymous messaging and has become popular on college campuses. Apps like Snapchat, which allow users to send photos that subsequently disappear – but can be saved with a screenshot – have also been increasingly associated with sexting.
Allen said the ACLU recently learned of a case in which a teenage boy was detained and charged after authorities found that he had received an explicit photo from his girlfriend. “Legislators from both parties understood that this isn’t something that should be criminalized,” he said.
A case in North Carolina thrust the issue of sexting laws into the spotlight when authorities charged two 16-year-olds who were dating with multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after discovering that they had shared nude selfies.
They were both considered perpetrators and victims in the case, and if convicted, they would have been labeled as sex offenders for decades. Eventually the charges were reduced to misdemeanors, landing them a year on probation.
In a recent scandal in Colorado, police found that high school and middle school students had allegedly exchanged hundreds of nude photos, prompting prosecutors to consider filing felony charges, which the district attorney’s office ultimately decided against.
“Our laws have to change with technology,” said Muñoz, who proposed the sexting reform as an amendment to a larger bill that enacted tougher penalties for child abuse images.
The proposal specifies that the minors engaged in sexting are only exempt from prosecution if they “knowingly and voluntarily” exchanged images and if there was no coercion involved.
Even though Martinez signed the bill, she said she disagreed with Muñoz’s proposal but passed the legislation anyway because of its expansion of exploitation penalties.
“I don’t support the so-called ‘sexting’ amendment, as I believe the reasoning behind it is misinformed and it was not carefully considered,” Martinez said in a statement, adding that she would ask the legislature to “work on this issue” in the next session.
The governor’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The state attorney general, Hector Balderas, who supported the original exploitation legislation, slammed the sexting proposal as dangerous. He said in a statement: “I cannot support an amendment that weakens protections for teenagers from predatory activity [and] creates a dangerous new child exploitation loophole.”
The US Air Force on Friday unveiled the first image of its next-generation bomber that will replace antique B-52s first developed during the Cold War.
The all-black plane has a distinctive, zigzagging shape and a super-low profile that will make it hard to spot on radar, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Air Force's B-2 bomber, which is also made by Northrop Grumman.
The new stealth bomber has yet to be built, so Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James displayed an artist's rendering at an Orlando event.
She said the plane, previously known as the Long Range Strike Bomber, would be called the B-21 until a new name has been agreed on, and she invited air crews to help.
"This aircraft represents the future for our Airmen, and (their) voice is important to this process," James told the Air Force Association's Air Warfare Symposium.
"The Airman who submits the selected name will help me announce it at the (Air Force Association) conference this fall."
The Pentagon in October announced Northrop as the winner of the contract to build the bomber in a decades-long program that will likely end up costing in excess of $100 billion.
The Air Force wants 100 of the warplanes, which will replace the ageing B-52s and the B-1 bombers that first saw action in the 1980s.
Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it will support Apple Inc's fight against a magistrate's order, which requires it to help the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation break into a San Bernardino shooter's iPhone.
An Amazon spokesman said the company was still working on its "amicus options."
The online retailer joins Alphabet Inc's Google, Facebook Inc>, Microsoft Corp and Twitter Inc in voicing support for Apple.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg castigated employees in a company memo for rejecting their colleagues' attempts to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, Gizmodo reported.
Zuckerberg said in the private memo that employees have been crossing out the phrase "Black lives matter" on the company's signature wall inside its Menlo Park, California headquarters and writing "All lives matter" in its place. Supporters of the movement have said on several occasions that the alternate phrase is used to diminish the effects of police violence against black communities.
"Despite my clear communication at Q&A last week that this was unacceptable, and messages from several other leaders from across the company, this has happened again," Zuckerberg wrote. "I was already very disappointed by this disrespectful behavior before, but after my communication I now consider this malicious as well."
Using the phrase "black lives matter" is not a slight against other communities, he explained, but a request that "the black community also achieves the justice they deserve."
He also argued that crossing any statement off the wall means silencing the author's point of view, which runs counter to the purpose of the wall. As USA Today reported, employees are encouraged to write on the company's walls, chalkboards, or dry-erase message boards.
Zuckerberg also noted that the company is hosting a town hall on March 4 to discuss the movement and other issues concerning the black community. Vox noted that 2 percent of the company's workforce is black.
Five Democratic U.S. senators, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, told the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission on Thursday that they had "significant concerns" about Charter Communications Inc's planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House Networks.
The senators, who also included Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Ron Wyden and Al Franken, said in a letter to the agencies that are reviewing the proposal that the deal would create "a nationwide broadband duopoly," with Charter and Comcast Corp in nearly two-thirds of U.S. high-speed broadband homes.
The senators urged the government to thoroughly address all potential harm to consumers.
They also raised concerns that Charter will take on significant debt that could harm its ability to honor commitments to build out its network, including in rural areas.
The FCC has said U.S. broadband prices are among the world's most expensive, according to the senators, who urged more competition.
The merger could lead to higher prices and fewer innovative services, they added.
Charter said in May that it would buy Time Warner Cable in a $56 billion cash-and-stock deal that would make it the No. 2 U.S. Internet and cable company after Comcast.
Shareholders of both companies and most U.S. states have approved the deal, which still awaits clearance from the federal government.
On Wednesday, Charter said it had won approval from New Jersey and was only awaiting clearance from two states where it will operate as New Charter.
The company agreed to return Time Warner Cable call centers to the United States and add jobs.
"Having demonstrated that the pending transactions with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks are squarely in the public interest, Charter remains confident they will close in a timely fashion," the company said on Wednesday.
New Charter would be the third-largest cable provider in the country, serving roughly 17.3 million customers, and the second-largest broadband provider, with 19.4 million subscribers. It would be in nearly 40 states.
Charter and Time Warner Cable did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. FCC spokeswoman Kim Hart said the commission had received the letter and was reviewing it.
The FCC hopes to complete its review by the end of March.
In April, Comcast withdrew its $45 billion offer for Time Warner Cable after U.S. regulators raised concerns that the deal would give it an unfair advantage in the cable TV and Internet-based services market.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery announced this week that employees would no longer be able to obtain iPhones because Apple's stand on privacy puts the company "on the side of terrorists."
In a news release on Wednesday, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said that effective immediately it "will discontinue providing iPhones as option for replacements or upgrades for existing employees."
“Apple’s refusal to cooperate with a legitimate law enforcement investigation to unlock a phone used by terrorists puts Apple on the side of terrorists instead of on the side of public safety,” Montgomery opined in the statement. “Positioning their refusal to cooperate as having anything to do with privacy interests is a corporate PR stunt and ignores the 4th Amendment protections afforded by our Constitution.”
Earlier this month, a court used the 1789 All Writs Act to order Apple to assist the FBI in hacking a phone that was in the possession of one of the San Bernardino shooting suspects. Apple has said that the code the government is trying to force it to write would put the privacy of all iPhones at risk.
Apple is expected to fight the order by arguing that computer code is free speech, and that the government cannot compel the company's speech.
Experts warn that a win by the government could have the unintended consequence of companies creating future devices that are virtually un-hackable.
Apple executives indicated this week that the company was already working on phones with new security measures that even it could not hack.
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