Techmeme: How North Korea's cyber warfare unit grew from a joke in 2009 into a major and active threat today, backed by 6,000+ hackers (New York Times)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

October 16, 2017, 9:15 AM

Top News

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

US CERT advisory: severe flaw in popular WiFi security protocol WPA2 leaves WiFi traffic open to eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and malicious injection — An air of unease set into the security circles on Sunday as they prepared for the disclosure of high-severe vulnerabilities …

New York Times:

How North Korea's cyber warfare unit grew from a joke in 2009 into a major and active threat today, backed by 6,000+ hackers — When North Korean hackers tried to steal $1 billion from the New York Federal Reserve last year, only a spelling error stopped them.

Tweets: @josephfcox, @hatr, @lexanderjmartin, @con_agius, @jessepesta, @chrisfralic, @cauchon, @breakersall, @mattocko, @mattwaxman1, @fryan, and @dnvolz

Stephanie Condon / ZDNet:

IBM rolls out blockchain network for cross-border payments, currently supporting 12 “currency corridors” including Australia, New Zealand, UK, Pacific islands — The promise of digital currency is finally coming to maturity, IBM says, with its unique international payments network.

More: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, IBM, International Business Times, SiliconANGLE, Fortune, CoinDesk, Silicon Republic, Computerworld, and IT ProPortal

Bloomberg:

How Google's meandering, secretive, non-committal robotics efforts since 2013 slowed progress in the field — Its scattered, ambiguous, frequently abandoned objectives for its string of big acquisitions have hurt the whole field. — In 1982, Blade Runner introduced the world to replicants …

More: Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check. Tweets: @business, @chrismaddern, and @manukumar

Derek Thompson / The Atlantic:

Inside Alphabet's moonshot division, X, which wants to build the next Google by nurturing invention and innovation, finding radical but feasible solutions

More: ZDNet. Tweets: @suchisaria, @pacoid, @chris_ciaccia, and @theteamatx

Matt Rosoff / CNBC:

Despite the backlash from politicians and the press, most Americans view big tech favorably — - Despite a growing chorus of anti-tech sentiment from the press and Washington, people still view tech companies favorably. — That's because most people are choosing to use these products because they make their lives better.

More: New York Times. Tweets: @cnbc

Regina R. Clewlow / Planetizen:

Survey: ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft have most likely reduced mass transit use and added to traffic in major US cities — Useable data of the effects of ride-hailing service on travel behavior is sorely lacking, but a new study sheds light on critical questions about what companies …

More: New York Times, The Verge, Axios, Curbed, San Francisco Chronicle, Fortune, and Wired

Tweets: @yoda, @theoverheadwire, @transbay, @cityobs, and @mrapptech

Rani Molla / Recode:

Survey of 6,100 US teens: 47% say Snapchat is their preferred social network, up from 39% this spring, 24% say Instagram, 9% Facebook, 7% Twitter — Snaps > tweets. — Snapchat is more popular among U.S. teens than ever, according to new research from investment firm Piper Jaffray.

More: LJ infoDOCKET, Business Insider, eMarketer and Newsroom Posts, and International Business Times

Tweets: @bdsams and @sbyrnes

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

The difficulty of the three steps required to hack power grids explains why actual disruptions are so rare — IN 2017, IT can sometimes seem like power grids are practically crawling with digital intruders. Over just the last four months, news has emerged that Russian hackers penetrated …

Tweets: @robertmlee

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:

Surreptitious cryptocurrency miners hide on PolitiFact and hundreds of other sites — Politifact is the latest and perhaps most high-profile website to have hosted code that secretly hijacks visitors' CPUs to mine cryptocurrency. Driven by a boom in cryptocoin value and a lack of protections …

More: SiliconANGLE, Adguard Blog, TechSpot, Engadget, iAfrikan, The Register, Newsweek, ZDNet, Neowin, HackRead, Neowin, and Tom's Guide

Fitz Tepper / TechCrunch:

Coinbase has launched instant cryptocurrency purchases of up to $25K from US bank accounts, dropping the typical wait period of 3-5 days — Coinbase just announced that users can instantly purchase cryptocurrency and have it be funded from a U.S. bank account.

More: Investopedia, Engadget, and CNBC. Thanks:@fitztepper

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Flaw in widely used RSA code library undermines security of millions of high-security RSA crypto keys used in high-stakes scenarios — Factorization weakness lets attackers impersonate key holders and decrypt their data. — A crippling flaw in a widely used code library has fatally undermined …

More: CRoCS wiki, politsei.ee, and BleepingComputer.com. Tweets: @dangoodin001

Boyd Chan / Neowin:

After outcry over excessive data collection, OnePlus says it will add an opt-out of usage analytics to the OxygenOS setup process — OnePlus once again found itself in hot water earlier this week after an eagle-eyed developer, Chris Moore, discovered that his OnePlus smartphone was uploading a raft of information back to the company.

More: Business Insider, OnePlus Forums, The Verge, SlashGear, Phandroid, Engadget, EOTO Tech, and Android Police

Marco Arment / Marco.org:

The dream of USB-C being one port and cable to replace all others is mired in confusion because of Alternate Modes and inconsistent backwards compatibility — I love the idea of USB-C: one port and one cable that can replace all other ports and cables. It sounds so simple, straightforward, and unified.

More: Boing Boing, Boing Boing, and mjtsai.com

Tweets: @dhh, @dannysullivan, @patrickmoorhead, and @stroughtonsmith

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM — This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:

Anthropic's first technical PM on token maxing, the jagged edge, and living in the future | Dianne Penn

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Big Technology Podcast:

What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Hard Fork:

OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

The Talk Show With John Gruber:

'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson

The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.

Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:15 AM ET, October 16, 2017.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.