Hacking Apple
Cybersecurity Firms consolidate / Twitter Uses Artificial Intelligence To Fight Fake News / FTC and DOJ probe Tech Giants / TV Blackouts / RIP iTunes
Pierluigi Paganini: Australian teenager hacked into Apple twice for a job
What can Apple’s fan do to work with his favorite company? A teen opted…to hack it twice. A 17-year-old Australian decided to attract the attention of the tech giant by gaining access to its mainframe with false credentials. The teen was dreaming of a job…
Details at Security Affairs blog
What is the strangest thing you’ve ever done to land a job and to demonstrate your skills? Is this teen misguided or does this approach work? I’d like to know what you think. Leave some comments below.
Ron Miller: Why four security companies just sold for $1.5B
If you’re thinking about starting a technology company, you may want to consider focusing on cybersecurity.
Last week was an incredible M&A whirlwind with four security companies getting acquired over just a three-day period:
On Tuesday, FireEye bought Verodin, a five-year-old startup that helps measure the effectiveness of your cybersecurity defenses for $250 million.
On Wednesday, Palo Alto Networks entered the fray, buying not one, but two Israeli security startups. The big prize was container security company Twistlock for $410 million. It also snagged serveless security company PureSec. Reports in Israeli media pegged that deal at between $60 and $70 million.
If that wasn’t enough for you, private equity firm Insight Partners bought 10-year old threat intelligence company, Recorded Future for $780 million.
That’s more than $1.5 billion changing hands for those of you keeping score at home. If you take a look at the four firms, the one common denominator was that each one was covering a different aspect of cybersecurity. Two were looking at more operational tasks, while the two companies that Palo Alto Networks grabbed were aimed squarely at modern developers using containers and serverless technologies.
TechCrunch has more about this.
Will consolidation in the security space make us more or less safe? Usually moves such as these mean less choice and higher prices. As the cyberwar heats up, what firms will emerge as the standard? CEO’s need to know which security firms are most reliable, provide the greatest value and can keep data safe from breaches, not just perform post-mortem work.
Mariella Moon: Twitter acquires AI startup to help it fight fake news
Twitter has acquired London startup Fabula AI, which is working on a technology to detect fake news. On its website, Fabula says its patented technology called Geometric Deep Learning exhibits high success rates when it comes to identifying and spotting online disinformation. Twitter didn’t mention how it plans to use the technology, though, only that Fabula will give the company the ability to “analyze very large and complex datasets.” The startup’s tech and talent will serve as the social network’s “key driver” in its efforts to make people feel safe, to help them see more relevant information and “to improve the health of the conversation” on the platform.
A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement when asked about the company’s plans for Fabula’s patented technology:
“There’s more to come on how we will integrate Fabula’s technology where it makes sense to strengthen our systems and operations in the coming months. It will likely take us some time to be able to integrate their graph deep learning algorithms into our ML platform. We’re bringing Fabula in for the team, tech and mission, which are all aligned with our top priority: Health.”
TechCrunch conducted an in-depth analysis of the Fabula AI’s fake news detection capabilities in February and determined that it has an accuracy of 93 percent. It’s hard to imagine Twitter not putting it to good use in the face of increasing scrutiny over the role social media platforms play in the spread of fake news online. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see how the website uses its creation.
The Fabula team will join a machine learning research group Twitter is forming under its Senior Director of Engineering, Sandeep Pandey. Twitter says it will make improving the health of the conversation on the website its priority after the Fabula team joins the company and will follow that up with ways to stop spam and abuse.
The article about Fabula at TechCrunch is worth a read.
Is it really artificial intelligence? So much machine learning carries the veneer of computing but really is made up of very low paid workers in developing countries doing repetitive work. What is really “under the hood” of Twitter’s new acquisition?
Diane Bartz & Jan Wolfe: U.S. moving toward major antitrust probe of tech giants
The U.S. government is gearing up to investigate whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google misuse their massive market power, sources told Reuters on Monday, setting up what could be an unprecedented, wide-ranging probe of some of the world’s largest companies.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, which enforce antitrust laws in the United States, have divided oversight over the four companies, two sources said, with Amazon and Facebook under the watch of the FTC, and Apple and Google under the Justice Department.
With jurisdiction established, the next step is for the two federal agencies to decide if they want to open formal investigations. Results are not likely to be quick. A previous FTC probe of Google took more than two years.
…While the four technology companies, all worth hundreds of billions of dollars, have drawn scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers around the world, it was not clear what the U.S. Justice Department or FTC planned to focus on.
…Legal experts have said U.S. regulators are unlikely to attempt to break up the technology giants.
It is rare to break up a company but not unheard of, with Standard Oil and AT&T being two of the biggest examples. U.S. antitrust probes more often result in an agreement to change certain business practices.
There is much more to this story from Reuters.
While Reuters believes anti-monopoly is statistically unlikely to happen, I think they underestimate consumers’ sour mood with technology. Far too often we have traded convenience for data privacy and found the cost too high. Silicon Valley, to most, has become a cabal of robber barons answerable to no one, and ruthless. These probes will have teeth that Congressional inquiries did not. Let’s see what happens.
Todd Shields & Erik Wasson: TV Show Blackouts Would Be Barred in Bipartisan House Effort
The second-ranking House Republican and a key Democrat say they’ll push to end broadcasters’ ability to black out signals during negotiations with cable and satellite service providers.
Republican Whip Steve Scalise and senior Energy and Commerce Committee member Anna Eshoo said Monday they will unveil a bill in the coming weeks. It’s likely to set off a fierce lobbying battle between broadcasters, which would lose negotiating leverage, and cable providers, which stand to benefit.
“Our legislation will allow for greater competition in the marketplace and will empower consumers with more freedom to watch their favorite programming,” Scalise of Louisiana, who has focused on the issue since before joining Republican leadership, said in a statement.
“The system today leaves consumers being held hostage to blackouts due to disputes between companies. Our bipartisan approach will eliminate blackouts and stem the rising costs,” said Eshoo of California. The number of blackouts has doubled in the last five years, she said.
At issue are conflicts over fees charged by television stations for cable providers to use the broadcast signal. If the sides don’t agree on fees, the broadcaster can withhold network programming, including sports, from cable systems.
A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee plans to hold a hearing Tuesday on a provision requiring good-faith negotiations during talks over fees, which is set to expire Jan. 1.
Read more details about this new legislation over at Bloomberg.
Should carriers be forced to provide streams where there has been no negotiated price? As a consumer (and admittedly I don’t watch much live programming or sports) we should welcome a carrier’s ability to deny access to content. In fact, having a la carte choices to build our own lineup would be ideal. Why should I pay higher rates for streams I won’t consume? The free market will show carriers and content providers what consumers are willing to pay for and what they do not want to fund. Personally I believe Roku has a leg-up on FireTV since Amazon wants to push us to content they provide for a fee. Roku provides a uniform search across all services to which I’ve subscribed, shows me where I can watch live and on-demand, gives me a choice of quality/bandwidth (I struggle with a provider data cap) and if the selection can be watched for free with ads. Traditional MSO’s need to take note…as subscriber counts fall to conversions of over-the-top programming, rates must climb. That pressure will force more into cord-cutting. The traditional model isn’t sustainable, so what’s the next strategy?
Lisa Vaas: Apple sunsets iTunes
Sayonara, music lovers: you won’t have Apple’s much-maligned, bloated iTunes to kick around anymore. Instead, you’ll have to aim your kicks in three directions, since Apple has decided to split its 18-year-old digital hub into three standalone desktop apps called Music, Podcasts and TV.
The move was announced on Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference.
Splitting up iTunes into three desktop apps will be similar to how those services are already divided on iPhones and iPads.
…Subscription services have taken over the digital music market: according to IHS Markit Research, in 2018, subscription services for music, such as Spotify, accounted for 80% of online music and video revenue, while there were more subscriptions worldwide to online video services (613.3 million) than for cable (556 million): a 27% jump over 2017.
As goes the industry, so goes Apple: it’s been keen on pushing users to sign up for its Apple Music subscription service. Why wait for customers to buy songs piecemeal? Charging a monthly fee instead is a nice, reliable revenue stream.
Read more details about what’s happening with the end of iTunes over the NakedSecurity blog by Sophos.
Will you miss iTunes? I won’t. I loved it’s programmable playlists that could give me “songs I listened to about this time last year” and other logic, but it long ago became a bloated mess. And frankly, I will never forgive Apple for ruining my collection of rare versions of songs by “matching” them to a digital equivalent that they preferred I used, replacing them in my library. I think that was the week I discovered Spotify would import my iTunes library and I never looked back.
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