Techmeme
December 19, 2020, 5:35 PM

Top News

Jacob Knutson / Axios:
Trump downplayed the massive cyberattack on the US government, claiming that China may be responsible and the “Fake News Media” is exaggerating its extent  —  President Trump downplayed a massive cyberattack on U.S. government departments and agencies and private companies on Twitter Saturday …
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Mike Pompeo says Russia is “pretty clearly” behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign, the first Trump administration official to publicly blame the country  —  Russia is behind the massive, ongoing cyber spy campaign against the federal government and private sector …
Associated Press:
Sources: WH officials were ready to release a statement on Friday accusing Russia of being “the main actor” in the SolarWinds hack, but were told to stand down  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Contradicting his secretary of state and other top officials, President Donald Trump …
New York Times:
How a years long effort to create Cyberpunk 2077, marred by infighting, incompetence, and poor planning, brought the Polish studio CD Projekt RED to its knees  —  Nearly a decade of hype led to a troubled release riddled with glitches, a livid fan base, refunds for potentially millions of players and a possible class-action lawsuit.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Wall Street Journal:
US officials say the hacking campaign involving SolarWinds would likely still be undetected if not for a security alert at FireEye that triggered scrutiny  —  Suspected Russian hack involving SolarWinds software that compromised parts of the U.S. government was executed on a scale that has surprised even veteran security experts
Reuters:
Kim Zetter / Yahoo News:
Brad Smith / Microsoft On the Issues:
ProPublica:
Leaked docs show how China stage-managed what appeared on its domestic internet to make coronavirus look less severe in the early days of the outbreak  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Patricia Hurtado / Bloomberg:
DOJ charges a China-based executive at Zoom with disrupting video meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square Massacre; Zoom says it terminated the employee  —  - Worker accused of disrupting Tiananmen Square commemorations  — Zoom says it fired Xinjiang Jin after internal investigation
Laurel Wamsley / NPR:
Stanford apologizes for its vaccine distribution plan that left out almost all front-line workers in the first round, blames an algorithm in an internal email  —  Stanford Medicine apologized on Friday for its vaccine distribution plan - a plan that came under fire for leaving out nearly …
Sankalp Phartiyal / Reuters:
Apple puts manufacturing partner Wistron on probation, after an audit found violations of Apple's Supplier Code of Conduct at Wistron's Bengaluru plant  —  NEW DELHI/BENGALURU (Reuters) - Apple Inc has placed supplier Wistron Corp on probation, saying on Saturday it would not award …

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