Techmeme
December 20, 2020, 10:10 PM

Top News

The Citizen Lab:
Citizen Lab: NSO's zero-day, zero-click exploit chain, active in at least iOS 13.5.1, was used to hack ~36 Al Jazeera reporters via iMessage in summer of 2020  —  Summary & Key Findings  — In July and August 2020, government operatives used NSO Group's Pegasus spyware …
Matt Stoller / BIG:
Google and Facebook may continue predatory behavior for years as antitrust cases play out, which can be deterred by filing criminal charges against their execs  —  Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai need to be indicted.  —  1 hr ago  —  Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly and finance.
Microsoft Security:
Microsoft details the Solorigate DLL file that was used to install a backdoor in SolarWinds Orion and reveals it discovered additional malware affecting Orion  —  - Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  — Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  —  We, along with the security industry …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Wall Street Journal:
Andrés Arrieta / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Facebook is attacking privacy with its anti-Apple campaign and has locked SMBs into a surveillance-powered advertising model that's invasive of customers  —  Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses.  This is a laughable attempt from Facebook …
Lingling Wei / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: in an early November meeting, Jack Ma offered concessions to Chinese regulators, including handing over parts of Ant Group if “the country needs it”  —  Trying to salvage his relationship with regulators in a Nov. 2 meeting, the Chinese billionaire said he was ready to do what the country needed
Katie Bo Williams / Defense One:
WH officials propose ending the “dual-hat” leadership arrangement of NSA and Cyber Command, renewing debate over splitting up the agencies amid recent attacks  —  An end to the “dual hat” arrangement has been debated for years — but the timing raises questions.
Michael Steeber / 9to5Mac:
Apple has closed nearly 100 stores globally since December 14, including in London, California, and Tennessee, as COVID-19 cases surge  —  New COVID-19 restrictions and worsening outbreaks have compelled Apple to temporarily close nearly one fifth of its retail stores during one of the busiest shopping weeks of the holiday season.
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 …
Associated Press:
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
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.
Ilya Khrennikov / Bloomberg:
JetBrains, maker of the language Kotlin, which never raised any VC funding is now valued at an estimated $7B, and says it will have $200M in revenue this year  —  - Google picked JetBrains for key coding language for Android  — Founders shunned VCs, bootstrapped to billion-dollar fortunes

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Earlier Picks

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Sankalp Phartiyal / Reuters: