Interesting Tech News from February 2021
This is a monthly column of curated tech news, highlighting interesting and/or valuable tech developments from the past month, which are impacting our society directly or indirectly. It also gives some vague sense of the trajectory that the technology as a whole is taking. The aim is to share the information concisely, in an easy-to-understand manner, help you fill some gaps on what you might have missed & learn something new.
Chipageddon - Why there is a chip shortage? Who is affected and what would be the impact?
Chips are hard to come by these days. Toyota and Ford had to idle their plants this year, as they didn’t have enough chips for the cars they were supposed to roll out. Gamers struggled to get their hands on the graphics cards. Apple had to delay launch of some of its iPhone models, because of shortage of LiDAR and power management chips. So, what’s causing this shortage?
Cars these days require many more chips. Electrification and Ai-fication (just made up this word, don’t know if it exists really) of the EV industry, has increased demands of the electronics chips.
Covid-19: As more and more people WFH, electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, routers, cameras etc. have grown ever more popular. This has contributed to the increased in demand for the chips.
Sony and Microsoft launched new gaming consoles recently, which might have driven the demand up as well.
5G: The rollout of 5G infrastructure creates enormous need for new chips such as 5G modems etc.
US, China trade tensions might have contributed to certain extent as well, since it affected the supply chains.
In addition to all of the above factors, there are not many big chip manufacturers like TSMC and Samsung. Building new chip manufacturing plants takes time.
The industry which is more badly hit by these shortages is the automotive industry. Car industry doesn’t buy chips in bulk, unlike a big smartphone manufacturer like Apple. As a result of these shortages, one can expect higher prices for the gadgets, short supply of gaming consoles, delays in EV delivery etc.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover’s Descent to the Red Planet
After 7 months of flight the rover landed successfully on Feb 18.
Mission objectives are to determine Red Planet’s suitability for living, collect soil samples and determine from them any signs of past microbial life and last but not the least test Oxygen production for future human missions.
Mars Rover’s Parachute carried a hidden message as well. The message was Dare Mighty Things and GPS coordinates of the mission’s HQs. PBS
Needless to say, the lessons learnt from the descent, landing and surface operations of the rover are going to prove very valuable for any future Mars endeavours.
VW will use Microsoft’s Azure Cloud to provide features for its self-driving fleet
VW struck a deal with Microsoft, which will enable it to streamline its software delivery efforts across its brands, including Audi and Porsche. The idea is that all VW brands use a common platform i.e., Microsoft Azure, not only for the development of self-driving features but also for deploying over-the-air updates to these vehicles. This will enable the drivers to add features to their cars, when they need them. The concept is similar to just like how we regularly update our smartphones. Tesla was the pioneer in bringing this concept to vehicles.
A popular App on Google Play store infects 10 Million users with just one update
Barcode Scanner used to be a popular app on Google Play store, which has recently been removed from the store. MalwarebytesLabs research showed, how an already popular app, installed on so many devices, was turned into a malware.
Users of the app, who have had it installed for a long time, started to notice strange behaviour, where ads would start to open in their default browsers out of nowhere. Turns out it was a series of app’s updates starting from November last year, which turned the app into a malware.
A malicious code was inserted into the app update. Why a developer of the popular app would do that? Apparently, the app was sold to another developer, whose intent was malicious. Why Google didn’t notify app users of the transfer to another developer? Nobody knows.
Link to the exact app, which should no longer be there on the Google Store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qrcodescanner.barcodescanner
Does Tesla Aim to turn Bitcoin Mining GREEN
Tesla purchased $1.5B of bitcoin and would soon accept it as a payment for its cars. How does power hungry bitcoin mining align with Tesla’s green energy goals? Only time would tell.
Interesting Cyber Attacks, Breaches Discovered in February 2021
Apparently, there had been another flaw in SolarWinds product, which was exploited by hackers to spy on U.S. payroll agency. This attack is separate from the Supply Chain Attack which involved SolarWinds Orion product, discovered in December last year.
According to Netlab, a new Botnet called Matryosh is spreading through the ADB (Android Debug Interface) interface on android devices. Once the device is infected, the botnet establishes connection with the Tor C2 through proxy and waits for further commands. The botnet is designed for for DDoS attacks.
SitePoint, a web tutorial site, disclosed a date breach of one million user credentials. Hackers managed to gain access to SitePoint’s code repositories through a 3rd party tool. Since the stolen passwords were hashed with the bcrypt algorithm and were salted as well, it will take quite a bit of effort for the hackers to crack the passwords. As a good practice, SitePoint has initiated a password reset on all accounts.
A Florida city’s water treatment plant’s computer network was remotely accessed with the intention of increasing the amount of lye (Sodium Hydroxide), in the water system. Apparently, the chemical was briefly increased, but thankfully that action was reversed by an operator.
Health record’s data breaches can be one of the most serious breaches. Hackers published stolen medical data of 500,000 from laboratories using Dedalus’s software in France. In another breach confidential data of 50,000 doctors and medical staff from French health ministry was published online.
Just like Capcom last year, this time Cyberpunk 2077 maker CD Projekt Red became the victim of the ransomware attack. The hackers had copied code from Cyberpunk 2077, Gwent and Witcher 3. The company has informed the law enforcement agency and investigating the hack.
Montreal based aviation company, Bombardier, suffered a data breach exposing confidential information of its employees and customers. It is believed that the attackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability in one of the 3rd party apps, used by Bombardier, called Accellion FTA. Enterprises use this application for the transfer of large files securely on a private cloud.
Canada Revenue Agency took a good preventative measure of suspending more than 100,000 taxpayers accounts, after finding that credentials for those accounts might be involved in another data breach and were available on the dark web.
Notable Tech Acquisitions in February 2021
The restaurant delivery app DoorDash buys food-robotics company Chowbotics.
Uber buys an alcohol delivery service for $1.1B.
Self-driving technology developer Aurora will be buying OURS Technology, to help reduce the size and cut costs of the LiDAR system that Aurora developed for the autonomous trucks by integrating it into a solid-state chip using OURS sensor fusion technology.
Other Tech News from February 2021
Facebooks has reversed its ban on news sharing in Australia after reaching new agreement that will allow Facebook to support the publishers they choose too.
You sould now be able to unlock iPhone with face mask on.
Nvidia will nerf its new RTX 3060 GPUs for Ethereum cryptocurrency mining. Reason for doing is that they want to have these GPUs available for gamers. Nvidia will offer new CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processors) for Ethereum miners instead.
According to theVerge, Fisker an EV startup, has completely abandoned its efforts to create a solid-state battery. The company founder thinks that the technology is difficult to materialize in the near future.
It’s interesting that M1 chips have only just been released and malware code for those chips is already available and AV tools are going to have to catch up fast to this rapid transition.
Canadian privacy watchdog has ruled that the use of Clearview’s AI technology is illegal. Clearview scrapes social networking sites for public imagery and then allows law enforcement agencies, through its technology, to match photographs of person of interests with its huge image database.
Fraudulent Website Warning will get a privacy boost in privacy focused iOS 14.5, by proxying the request. This will not reveal your IP to the Safe Browsing provider such as Google or Tencent.