DoJ points fingers in Yahoo hack, tech opposes Trump's Muslim ban (again) and Ronald McDonald goes off-script on Twitter. It's the Daily Crunch for March 16, 2017. You could read this all in the TechCrunch iMessage app, but it doesn't exist because the iMessage App Store is a bit of a dud. 1. The Department of Justice says Russians and criminals were behind 2014 Yahoo hack Yahoo's big 2014 breach, which involved at least 500 million accounts, was apparently the work of two Russian FSB officers and two criminal hackers, according to the U.S. Justice Department. It's rare you get such specific finger-pointing in cases like this, and I suppose it makes Yahoo look like somewhat less of a fool since it's such a pro hacking team. Three of the four accused in the report are based in Russia, but one has been arrested in Canada and could be extradited to the U.S. to face charges. 2. 57 tech companies file opposition to Trump's new Muslim ban Stop me if you've heard this one before: Trump issues an executive order, it faces strong legal opposition in federal courts, and said opposition is formally supported by tech companies via amicus brief filing. Well it happened again, which is another reason to feel good about the tech sector in general. 3. Mass female celebrity hack happens again A reminder that tech can be good followed by a reminder that the internet is mostly bad: 4chan and Reddit have again proven the delivery vector for a massive breach of privacy involving images and video of female celebrities. Remember, too, that this is mostly like a heinousness iceberg: We see the tip when it involves high-profile or high-volume, but it's happening pretty much constantly. 4. GoPro's worker woes continue GoPro is slashing 270 more jobs, after announcing 100 cuts in January and 200 before that in November. Things are officially Not Very Good over at the action cam maker. 5. iMessage App Store limps along The iMessage App Store seemed like a place with a lot of promise for developers, but new data from an app analytics provider suggests developers are losing interest in the young software marketplace. Sarah suggests bad UX for iMessage apps could be a cause, and I have to agree. 6. Nvidia gets a great new vector for self-driving tech Nvidia is working with Bosch on in-car AI supercomputers for self-driving tech. This basically means Bosch will be able to leverage its relationships as a tier one supplier to every major automaker worldwide to take some of the sales and deployment burden off of Nvidia, which is very good news for Nvidia's autonomous driving industry ambitions. 7. McDonald's tweets McDonald's official account briefly tweeted, then pinned a response to Donald Trump that was... less than complimentary. The tweet was quickly pulled and McDonald's says it's looking into what happened, suggesting hacking. Probably just a wrong account post IMO, but we'll see what the official excuse ends up being. |