The Linkielist

Linking ideas with the world

The Linkielist

Daily Archives: August 20, 2020

A Gmail and Google Drive outage is causing errors around the world – yay cloud!

Posted on by

Can’t send something on Gmail? If so then you’re in good company, ever since about midnight ET, people have been complaining about issues connecting to many of the G suite services, but especially Gmail.

The Google apps status page just updated to confirm they’ve received reports of an issue with Gmail and Google Drive, while a quick look at Twitter or on DownDetector shows thousands of reports over the last hour or so.

I’ve been able to send emails, but trying to attach a file shows a slow upload process that, if it completes, eventually leads to an error message saying that I need to check my network. It’s the same thing many others are experiencing, but at least it’s working a little. Oh, and if things weren’t bad enough for remote workers on this shift, it looks like Slack is having some issues too.

Update (2:14 AM ET): Google’s status page says they are continuing to investigate the issue. It has also updated to indicate reports of problems with Google Meet, Google Voice and Google Docs, while anecdotal reports show people are having issues uploading to YouTube as well.

Google:

8/20/20, 1:29 AM We’re investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly.

8/20/20, 2:07 AM We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 8/20/20, 4:00 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.

Source: A Gmail and Google Drive outage is causing errors around the world | Engadget

235 Million Instagram, TikTok And YouTube User Profiles Exposed In Massive Data Leak

Posted on by

it was such an unsecured database that the Comparitech researchers, led by Bob Diachenko, discovered on August 1, leaving the personal profile data of nearly 235 million Instagram, TikTok and YouTube users up for grabs.

The data was spread across several datasets; the most significant being two coming in at just under 100 million each and containing profile records apparently scraped from Instagram. The third-largest was a dataset of some 42 million TikTok users, followed by just under 4 million YouTube user profiles.

MORE FROM FORBESGot An Email From A Hacker With Your Password? Do These 3 ThingsBy Davey Winder

Comparitech says that, based on the samples it collected, one in five records contained either a telephone number or email address. Every record also included at least some, sometimes all, the following information:

  • Profile name
  • Full real name
  • Profile photo
  • Account description

Statistics about follower engagement, including:

  • Number of followers
  • Engagement rate
  • Follower growth rate
  • Audience gender
  • Audience age
  • Audience location
  • Likes
  • Last post timestamp
  • Age
  • Gender

“The information would probably be most valuable to spammers and cybercriminals running phishing campaigns,” Paul Bischoff, Comparitech editor, says. “Even though the data is publicly accessible, the fact that it was leaked in aggregate as a well-structured database makes it much more valuable than each profile would be in isolation,” Bischoff adds. Indeed, Bischoff told me that it would be easy for a bot to use the database to post targeted spam comments on any Instagram profile matching criteria such as gender, age or number of followers.

Tracing the source of the leaked data

So, where did all this data originate? The researchers suggest that the evidence, including dataset names, pointed to a company called Deep Social. However, Deep Social was banned by both Facebook and Instagram in 2018 after scraping user profile data. The company was wound down sometime after this.

A Facebook company spokesperson told me that “scraping people’s information from Instagram is a clear violation of our policies. We revoked Deep Social’s access to our platform in June 2018 and sent a legal notice prohibiting any further data collection.”

Once the researchers found the database and the clues to its origin, “we sent an alert to Deep Social, assuming the data belonged to them,” Bischoff says. The administrators of Deep Social then forwarded the disclosure to a Hong Kong-registered social media influencer data-marketing company called Social Data. “Social Data shut down the database about three hours after our initial email,” Bischoff says.

[…]

Source: 235 Million Instagram, TikTok And YouTube User Profiles Exposed In Massive Data Leak

Scientists slow and steer light with resonant nanoantennas

Posted on by

in a paper published on Aug. 17, in Nature Nanotechnology, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will. Researchers in the lab of Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, structured ultrathin silicon chips into nanoscale bars to resonantly trap light and then release or redirect it later. These “high-quality-factor” or “high-Q” resonators could lead to novel ways of manipulating and using light, including new applications for quantum computing, virtual reality and augmented reality; light-based WiFi; and even the detection of viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

“We’re essentially trying to trap light in a tiny box that still allows the light to come and go from many different directions,” said postdoctoral fellow Mark Lawrence, who is also lead author of the paper. “It’s easy to trap light in a box with many sides, but not so easy if the sides are transparent—as is the case with many Silicon-based applications.”

Source: Scientists slow and steer light with resonant nanoantennas