Italy’s competition watchdog has ordered Google to pay over €100 million ($123 million) for abuse of its dominant position. The regulator said Google had shut out an electric vehicle recharging app from its Android Auto infotainment platform for cars for over two years.
The company at the core of the action is Enel X — a subsidiary of Italian energy provider Enel — which through its JuicePass app gives EV drivers access to about 95,000 public charging points in Europe. The watchdog said by blocking the app for over two years Google was essentially favoring Google Maps, which also lets users search for nearby EV charging points. Along with the fine, the regulator told Google to make the JuicePass app available on Android Auto.
Echoing concerns raised by its EU and UK counterparts, the Italian authority pointed to Google’s gatekeeper status over the digital economy. The regulator said Android OS and the Google Play store had given the company a “dominant position” that allowed it to” control the access of app developers to end users.” In the case of Enel X, the watchdog said that by excluding the JuicePass app Google had put its rival’s business in jeopardy and potentially hobbled the advancement of electric mobility.
The new technique uses a computer to convert attempted handwriting movements from brain activity into on-screen text. As part of their tests, the team worked with a 65-year-old participant (named T5 in the study) who was paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury sustained in 2007.
The researchers started by placing two brain chip implants into T5’s motor cortex — the part of the brain that controls movement. They told the participant to imagine he was writing normally with a pen on a piece of ruled paper. The brain chips then sent his neural signal through wires to a computer where an AI algorithm essentially transcribed his “mindwriting” by decoding hand and finger motion.
The end result saw T5 reach a writing speed of about 18 words per minute with 94.1 percent accuracy. Comparatively, an able-bodied adult of a similar age can type about 23 words per minute on a smartphone
Senator Wyden’s office asked the Department of Defense (DoD), which includes various military and intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), for detailed information about its data purchasing practices after Motherboard revealed special forces were buying location data. The responses also touched on military or intelligence use of internet browsing and other types of data, and prompted Wyden to demand more answers specifically about warrantless spying on American citizens.
Some of the answers the DoD provided were given in a form that means Wyden’s office cannot legally publish specifics on the surveillance; one answer in particular was classified. In the letter Wyden is pushing the DoD to release the information to the public.
[…]
“Are any DoD components buying and using without a court order internet metadata, including ‘netflow’ and Domain Name System (DNS) records,” the question read, and asked whether those records were about “domestic internet communications (where the sender and recipient are both U.S. IP addresses)” and “internet communications where one side of the communication is a U.S. IP address and the other side is located abroad.”
Netflow data creates a picture of traffic flow and volume across a network. DNS records relate to when a user looks up a particular domain, and a system then converts that text into the specific IP address for a computer to understand; essentially a form of internet browsing history.
Wyden’s new letter to Austin urging the DoD to release that answer and others says “Information should only be classified if its unauthorized disclosure would cause damage to national security. The information provided by DoD in response to my questions does not meet that bar.”
[…]
“Other than DIA, are any DoD components buying and using without a court order location data collected from phones located in the United States?” one of Wyden’s questions reads. The answer to that is one that Wyden is urging the DoD to release.
The DIA memo said the agency believes it does not require a warrant to obtain such information. Following this, Wyden also asked the DoD which other DoD components have adopted a similar interpretation of the law. One response said that each component is itself responsible to make sure they follow the law.
Wyden is currently proposing a new piece of legislation called The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act which would force some agencies to obtain a warrant for location and other data.
A day after US President Joe Biden said the US plans to disrupt the hackers behind the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, the operator of the Darkside ransomware said the group lost control of its web servers and some of the funds it made from ransom payments.
“A few hours ago, we lost access to the public part of our infrastructure, namely: Blog. Payment server. CDN servers,” said Darksupp, the operator of the Darkside ransomware, in a post spotted by Recorded Future threat intelligence analyst Dmitry Smilyanets.
“Now these servers are unavailable via SSH, and the hosting panels are blocked,” said the Darkside operator while also complaining that the web hosting provider refused to cooperate.
In addition, the Darkside operator also reported that cryptocurrency funds were also withdrawn from the gang’s payment server, which was hosting ransom payments made by victims.
The funds, which the Darkside gang was supposed to split between itself and its affiliates (the threat actors who breach networks and deploy the ransomware), were transferred to an unknown wallet, Darksupp said.
Takedown?
This sudden development comes after US authorities announced their intention to go after the gang.
[…]
Or exit scam?
But Smilyanets warns that the group’s announcement could also be a ruse, as no announcement has yet been made by US officials.
The group could be taking advantage of President Biden’s statements as cover to shut down its infrastructure and run away with its affiliate’s money without paying their cuts—a tactic known as an “exit scam” on the cybercriminal underground.
[…]
The news that Darkside lost control of its servers and that a major cybercrime forum was banning ransomware ads, all happening within a span of hours of each other, also had an effect on REvil, arguably considered today’s biggest ransomware operation.
In a post quoting Darkside’s (now-deleted) statement, REvil spokesperson Unknown made an announcement of their own and said they also plan to stop advertising their Ransomware-as-a-Service platform and “go private”—a term used by cybercrime gangs to describe their intention to work with a small group of known and trusted collaborators only.
Additionally, the REvil group also said that it plans to stop attacking sensitive social sectors like healthcare, educational institutes, and the government networks of any country, which it believes could draw unwanted attention to its operation, such as the attention Darkside is getting right now.
In the case of any of such attacks carried out by any of its collaborators, REvil said they plan to provide a free decryption key to victims and stop working with the misbehaving affiliate.
Image: Recorded Future
Furthermore, hours after REvil’s announcement, the operators of the Avaddon ransomware also announced similar updates to their program, with the same clause barring ransomware groups from attacking government entities, healthcare orgs, and educational institutes.
While we may never know who or what is driving these changes among ransomware gangs, it is pretty clear that the Colonial Pipeline attack and its aftermath appears to have broken the camel’s back, and US authorities have started applying some sort of pressure on these groups.
The Tianwen-1 mission, China’s first interplanetary endeavor, reached the surface of the Red Planet Friday (May 14) at approximately 7:11 p.m. EDT (2311 GMT), though Chinese space officials have not yet confirmed the exact time and location of touchdown. Tianwen-1 (which translates to “Heavenly Questions”) arrived in Mars’ orbit in February after launching to the Red Planet on a Long March 5 rocket in July 2020.
After circling the Red Planet for more than three months, the Tianwen-1 lander, with the rover attached, separated from the orbiter to begin its plunge toward the planet’s surface. Once the lander and rover entered Mars’ atmosphere, the spacecraft endured a similar procedure to the “seven minutes of terror” that NASA’s Mars rovers have experienced when attempting soft landings on Mars.
An artist’s concept of China’s first Mars rover mission, Tianwen-1, at the Red Planet. (Image credit: CCTV/CNSA)
A heat shield protected the spacecraft during the fiery descent, after which the mission safely parachuted down to the Utopia Planitia region, a plain inside of an enormous impact basin in the planet’s northern hemisphere. Much like during NASA’s Perseverance rover landing, Tianwen-1’s landing platform fired some small, downward-facing rocket engines to slow down during the last few seconds of its descent.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has not yet officially confirmed the successful landing, but it has been announced on social media by the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN) and by researchers at Macau University of Science and Technology in China.
Succesful landing of #Tianwen1, on #Mars! Landing point: 109.7 E, 25.1 N, less than 40 km from target location in Utopia Planitia. More details expected later! pic.twitter.com/bMSvziscjiMay 15, 2021
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China’s Mars rover, called Zhurong after an ancient fire god in Chinese mythology, will part ways with the lander by driving down a foldable ramp. Once it has deployed, the rover is expected to spend at least 90 Mars days (or about 93 Earth days; a day on Mars lasts about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth) roving around on Mars to study the planet’s composition and look for signs of water ice. Utopia Planitia is believed to contain vast amounts of water ice beneath the surface. It’s also where NASA’s Viking 2 mission touched down in 1976.
An image of Utopia Planitia taken by the Tianwen-1 orbiter at an altitude of about 220 miles (350 kilometers). (Image credit: CNSA)
The six-wheeled rover, which is about the size of NASA’s twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, carries six scientific instruments on board, including two panoramic cameras, a ground-penetrating radar and a magnetic field detector. It also has a laser that it can use to zap rocks and study their composition, as well as a meteorological instrument to study the climate and weather on Mars.
Zhurong will work in tandem with the Tianwen-1 orbiter to study the Red Planet, and the orbiter will serve as a data relay station for communications between Zhurong and mission controllers on Earth. The orbiter is designed to last for at least one Mars year, or about 687 Earth days.
In a 28-second video, which was posted to Twitter this week by a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to launch rocket attacks at Israelis from densely populated civilian areas.
Instead, the video that he shared, which can be found on many YouTube channels and other video-hosting sites, was from 2018. And according to captions on older versions of the video, it showed militants firing rockets not from Gaza but from Syria or Libya.
The video was just one piece of misinformation that has circulated on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media this week about the rising violence between Israelis and Palestinians, as Israeli military ground forces attacked Gaza early on Friday. The false information has included videos, photos and clips of text purported to be from government officials in the region, with posts baselessly claiming early this week that Israeli soldiers had invaded Gaza, or that Palestinian mobs were about to rampage through sleepy Israeli suburbs.
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