Category Archives: Technology

Terra founder wanted by Interpol tweets he is making ‘zero effort’ to hide

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Search for crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon after Luna and UST collapse drags down rival currencies

The crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon has denied being in hiding, even as Interpol issued a “red notice” for his arrest after the collapse of the Terra project he founded.

After South Korean prosecutors said he was “obviously on the run”, Kwon tweeted that he was making no attempt to evade law officers. “I’m writing code in my living room … I’m making zero effort to hide,” he said. “I go on walks and malls, no way none of [crypto Twitter] hasn’t run into me the past couple weeks.”

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Elon Musk to face deposition by Twitter lawyers ahead of trial

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Attorneys are expected to use the interview to try to show that Musk abandoned the deal due to falling financial markets

Elon Musk is scheduled to spend the next few days with lawyers for Twitter, answering questions ahead of an October trial that will determine whether he must follow through on his $44bn agreement to acquire the social platform after attempting to back out of the deal.

The deposition, planned for Monday, Tuesday and a possible extension on Wednesday, will not be public. As of Sunday evening, it was not clear whether Musk would appear in person or by video. Reuters reported the deposition did not happen Monday nor was a reason given for the delay, citing sources with knowledge of the situation.

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Optus cyber-attack: company opposed changes to privacy laws to give customers more rights over their data

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In its submission to Privacy Act review telco said giving people right to erase personal data would involve ‘significant’ hurdles and costs

Optus has repeatedly opposed a proposed change to privacy laws that would give customers the right to request their data be destroyed, with the telco arguing there were “significant hurdles” to implementing such a system and it would come at “significant cost”.

On Thursday, the company revealed it had suffered a massive cyber-attack in which the personal information of customers was stolen, including names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, addresses, and passport and driver’s licence numbers.

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Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and Facebook

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Meta’s president of global affairs said it would be a decision ‘I oversee’ after the ex-president’s accounts were suspended in 2021

Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.

Speaking at an event held in Washington by news organization Semafor, Clegg said the company was seriously debating whether Trump’s accounts should be reinstated and said it was a decision that “I oversee and I drive”.

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France sets minimum book delivery fee in anti-Amazon struggle

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€3 charge aims to gives independent booksellers a chance against e-commerce firms that use free delivery loophole

France’s crusade to protect independent booksellers against huge online retailers was stepped up on Friday as the government proposed a €3 (£2.66) minimum delivery fee for all online book orders of less than €35.

The government’s fixed fee for online deliveries is part of a quest to support independent bookshops against the domination of big tech firms, such as Amazon.

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Can I Tell You a Secret, episode 1: the beginning – podcast

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In the first part of a new series, the Guardian journalist Sirin Kale takes us to a small town in the north of England to uncover how one man began a decade of cyberstalking

In this new six-episode podcast, the Guardian journalist Sirin Kale investigates the story of Matthew Hardy, a cyberstalker who terrified people in his hometown and beyond for more than a decade.

His harassment would often start in the same way, a fake profile posing as a young woman with a simple message: “Hey hun, can I tell you a secret?”. This series attempts to untangle his web of deception to find out how and why he wreaked havoc over so many people’s lives.

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Tesla recalls nearly 1.1m vehicles in US over windows pinching fingers

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Company says in documents that the automatic window reversal system may not react correctly after detecting an obstruction

Tesla is recalling nearly 1.1m vehicles in the US because the windows can pinch a person’s fingers when being rolled up.

Tesla says in documents posted Thursday by US safety regulators that the automatic window reversal system may not react correctly after detecting an obstruction.

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Iran blocks capital’s internet access as Amini protests grow

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Social media platforms have also been cut off in areas of Tehran and Kurdistan as videos of dissent go viral

Iran has shut off the internet in parts of Tehran and Kurdistan and blocked access to platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp in an attempt to curb a growing protest movement that has relied on social media to document dissent.

The protests, which were sparked on 16 September after the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in police custody, show no sign of subsiding. On Thursday, protesters torched police stations and vehicles in several cities.

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Customers’ personal data stolen as Optus suffers massive cyber-attack

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Personal information of potentially millions of customers exposed, including names, dates of birth, addresses, and contact details

Optus has suffered a massive cyber-attack, with the personal information of customers stolen, including names, dates of birth, addresses, and contact details.

The telco suffered the data breach when hackers, believed to be working for a criminal or state-sponsored organisation, accessed the sensitive information by breaking through the company’s firewall.

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South Korean founder of failed cryptocurrency Terra denies he is ‘on the run’

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Do Kwon’s whereabouts are still unknown since a South Korean court issued an arrest warrant earlier this week

Do Kwon, the South Korean founder of the failed cryptocurrency Terra wanted by police, has denied he was on the run after Singapore investigators said he was not in the city-state as had been believed.

Kwon’s whereabouts have been thrown into question after a statement from Singapore police late on Saturday, and his tweets did not reveal where he was.

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Biden talks up electric vehicle revolution – but is America ready to give up gas?

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President appears at Detroit auto show, where EVs are this year’s stars – but the road to electrification promises to be a bumpy one

Fresh off signing legislation aimed at propelling the nation’s electric vehicle (EV) transition, Joe Biden was in Detroit last week to reaffirm his support for electrification ahead of the opening of the US’s largest annual car show.

“The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified, whether you’re driving along the coast, or on I-75 here in Michigan,” he declared as the first North American International Auto Show since 2019 prepared to open its doors.

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Dutch town takes Twitter to court over unfounded satanic paedophile claims

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Bodegraven-Reeuwijk has been plagued by a conspiracy theory and wants tweets spreading it removed

A small Dutch town took Twitter to court on Friday to demand the social media company take down all messages relating to a supposed ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles alleged to have been active in the town in the 1980s.

Bodegraven-Reeuwijk, a town of about 35,000 inhabitants in the middle of the Netherlands, has been the focus of conspiracy theories on social media since 2020, when three men started spreading unfounded stories about the abuse and murder of children they said took place in the town in the 1980s.

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Uber responding to ‘cybersecurity incident’ after hack

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Ride-hailing company confirms attack after hacker compromises Slack app and messages employees

Uber has been hacked in an attack that appears to have breached the ride-hailing company’s internal systems.

The California-based company confirmed it was responding to a “cybersecurity incident”, after the New York Times reported that a hack had accessed the company’s network and forced it to take several internal communications and engineering systems offline. The hacker claimed to be 18 years old, according to the report.

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Twitter whistleblower tells Senate of ‘egregious’ security failings by company

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Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, former head of security, says ‘any employee could take over the accounts of any senator in this room’

A Twitter whistleblower who accused the company of “egregious” security deficiencies testified in front of Congress on Tuesday, expanding on accusations of corporate failings he filed to federal agencies in August.

Former hacker Peiter “Mudge” Zatko worked as head of security at Twitter from 2020 until he was fired in 2022, and says in that time he witnessed “extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter in every area of his mandate”.

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Coinbase employee mired in first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency

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Rohan Wahi, the brother of a former product manager at the company, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy charges

The brother of a former Coinbase Global Inc product manager pleaded guilty on Monday to a wire fraud conspiracy charge, in what US prosecutors have called the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency.

Nikhil Wahi, 26, admitted during a virtual court hearing before US district judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan that he made trades based on confidential Coinbase information.

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‘We’ve experienced an anomaly’: Bezos’s latest Blue Origin launch fails

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New Shepard rocket fails shortly after launch, but uncrewed capsule jettisons successfully

An uncrewed rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, failed shortly after launch in Texas on Monday morning, a potential setback for the Amazon founder’s wider ambitions of sending humans into orbit.

The malfunction of the New Shepard booster, a type of rocket that is similar to the one Blue Origin has used this year to send three crews of up to six people on suborbital flights, came 1min 4sec after launch and just as the vehicle was reaching its maximum dynamic pressure, known as “max q”.

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Insider cyber threats pose ‘significant’ risk to Australia’s defence force, brief warns

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Incoming brief to Albanese government cites risk of malicious employees accessing and inappropriately using systems

Defence is at “significant risk” from cyber insider threats, the department’s incoming brief to the Albanese government says.

That could include malicious, disgruntled or merely duped employees accessing Defence’s systems and threatening their security.

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US bans ‘advanced tech’ firms from building facilities in China for a decade

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Move comes as Biden administration outlines plans to boost domestic production of semiconductors

US technology firms that receive government funding will be banned from building “advanced technology facilities” in China for a decade, the Biden administration has announced, as it outlined plans to increase domestic production of semiconductors.

The requirements come under the US government’s near-$53bn (£46bn) plan to scale up manufacturing of semiconductor chips – the “brain” in every electronic device from cars to household appliances – which are predominantly produced in Asia.

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Uber’s ex-security chief faces landmark trial over data breach that hit 57m users

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Joe Sullivan’s trial is believed to be the first case of an executive facing criminal charges over such a breach

Uber’s former security officer, Joe Sullivan, is standing trial this week in what is believed to be the first case of an executive facing criminal charges in relation to a data breach.

The US district court in San Francisco will start hearing arguments on whether Sullivan, the former head of security at the ride share giant, failed to properly disclose a 2016 data breach affecting 57 million Uber riders and drivers around the world.

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Elon Musk demands Twitter trial delay over whistleblower concerns

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Twitter counters that Musk is using new claims to cover up buyer’s remorse as trial over broken deal set to begin next month

A trial over Elon Musk’s bid to end his $44bn deal for Twitter should be delayed by several weeks to allow him to investigate a whistleblower’s claims about security on the social media platform, Musk’s lawyer told a judge on Tuesday.

“Doesn’t justice demand a few weeks to look into this?” said Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, at a hearing in Wilmington, Delaware.

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