Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Thursday, December 28, 2023, I'm Brian McCulloch. Today, researchers have found a gnarly, zero-click, zero-day, eye-message hack that has been exploited. Apple can sell watches again. What was the best performing tech stock of 2023? Will 2024 Be The Climax Of The Streaming Wars? And Will 2024 Be The Year Apple finally gets Serious About Gaming On Macs? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.
Researchers have found a zero-click eye-message attack that for over four years used four zero-days to hack iPhones, including dozens belonging to casper-ski employees, going ours technical. Chief among the discoveries, the unknown attackers were able to achieve an unprecedented level of access by exploiting a vulnerability in an undocumented hardware feature that few if anyone outside of Apple and ship suppliers such as ARM Holdings knew of.
The exploit sophistication and the features obscurity suggests the attackers had advanced technical capabilities, casper-ski researcher Boris Laren wrote in an email. Our analysis hasn't revealed how they became aware of this feature, but were exploring all possibilities including accidental disclosure in past firmware or source code releases. They may also have stumbled upon it through hardware, reverse engineering, end quote.
Other questions remain unanswered, Laren, even after about 12 months of intensive investigation. Besides how the attackers learned of the hardware feature, the researchers still don't know what precisely its purpose is.
Also unknown is if the feature is a native part of the iPhone or embedded by a third-party hardware component such as ARM's Corsite, the Mass Backduring Campaign, which according to Russian officials also infected the iPhones of thousands of people working inside diplomatic missions and embassies in Russia, according to Russian government officials, came to light in June.
Over a span of at least four years, casper-ski said the infections were delivered in iMessage Texts that installed malware through a complex exploit chain without requiring the receiver to take any action. With that, the devices were infected with full-featured spyware that, among other things, transmitted microphone recordings, photos, geo-location, and other sensitive data to attacker-controlled servers.
Although infections didn't survive a reboot, the unknown attacker kept their campaign alive simply by sending devices a new malicious iMessage Text shortly after the devices were restarted. Besides affecting iPhones, these critical zero days and the secret hardware function resided in Macs, iPads, iPads, Apple TVs, and Apple Watches, what's more, the exploits casper-ski recovered were intentionally developed to work on those devices as well.
Apple has patched those platforms, Apple declined to comment for this article, and quote. Part of me hesitates to do the day-by-day Tick-Tack on this, but you should know that a US appeals court has paused the ITC's Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 import ban over those Massimo patents we told you about. Apple resumed Apple Watch sales of those particular devices in some physical US stores yesterday, online sales are set to resume today, December 28th by 3pm Eastern Time.
Quoting Reuters The Tick-Giant had filed an emergency request asking for the US court of appeals for the Federal Circuit to halt the order from the US International Trade Commission, which had ruled that Apple had infringed on the patents of Irvine, California-based Massimo. A final decision could cost either company millions of dollars and potentially force a settlement or some kind of technological work around by Apple analysts said.
Ultimately, though, any financial hit for Apple is likely to be dwarfed by the bad publicity the lawsuit is generating, they said. Massimo has accused Apple of hiring away its employees, stealing its pulse-oxymetry technology, and incorporating it into Apple Watches. Apple has counter-sued, calling Massimo's legal actions a quote, maneuver to clear a path for its own competing smartwatch.
Yes, but on that, hiring away employees thing, Mark German has more details on maybe how this whole Bruhaha came about. Apparently, it all came down to a single hire. Stanford, PhD, Marcelo, lamego, who was the CTO of Massimo Spinoff, CERCA CORE. At about 1am, California time in 2013, a scientist emailed Apple, chief executive officer Tim Cook with an irresistible pitch.
I strongly believe that we can develop the new wave of technology that will make Apple the number one brand in the medical fitness and wellness market he wrote in the email, which was later included in legal documents. Some 10 hours after the message was sent, an Apple recruiter was in touch. And just weeks after that, the engineer was working at the tech company on a smartwatch with health sensors.
A flurry of activity began within a few months, and Apple, the employee, asked the company to file about a dozen patents related to sensors and algorithms for determining a person's blood oxygen level from a wearable device. But this wasn't just any engineer. He had been the chief technology officer of CERCA CORE laboratories, the sister company of Massimo, which went on to get the US to ban the Apple Watch.
Massimo, a relatively obscure maker of medical devices based in Irvine, California, argues that Lamego seized its prized asset, the ability to non-invasively and accurately capture the level of oxygen in a person's blood and took it to Apple. The feature ultimately helped to turn the watch into more of a health device, solidifying its status as the wearable industry's best selling product. Others for Massimo say that Lamego lacked prior knowledge about how to develop the blood oxygen feature.
His previous studies were about neural interfaces rather than health sensors. He learned how to build the technology at canes, companies, and delivered it to Apple. Lamego then resigned from Apple in July 2014 just months after joining. Massimo argues that he left after Apple got what it needed. The reality, according to longtime Apple executive Steve Hotelling, is that Lamego didn't fit in at the company.
He clashed with managers, demanded multi-million dollar budgets, and wanted the ability to hire his own engineers without approval. Hotelling said in a deposition that was part of a court fight between the companies, after weeks of discussions, Lamego left Apple. Seattle based e-commerce website Zoolily, which was once valued at around $7 billion back in 2014, is winding down its business. In a recent lawsuit, Zoolily accused Amazon of stifling its business, according to Seattle Times.
Once an e-commerce star online retailers Zoolily will liquidate its inventory to pay its creditors as it winds down. The company based in Seattle started to shut down its operations earlier this month, after a 13-year run that briefly dazzled the tech industry before fizzling in the face of stiff competition from Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. Days before announcing a final sale, Zoolily laid off more than 800 employees, including 292 in the Seattle area.
On Friday, Zoolily agreed to, quote, conduct an orderly wind-down of the business, according to a note that now fills the company's website. Zoolily entered into an assignment for the benefit of creditors, or ABC, which means a third-party fiduciary will complete the liquidation and work to maximize value for Zoolily's creditors. Douglas Wilson company is a San Diego-based business services firm will act as the assignee, manage the wind-down, and liquidate Zoolily's assets.
The ABC is an alternative to filing for bankruptcy, but can be cheaper and more streamlined, said Douglas Wilson, the CEO and Chairperson of the Eponymous Company. In Zoolily's case, quote, it's happening because there's nothing left, he said. Zoolily placed the blame for its slide on its e-commerce rival and neighbor Amazon, according to a lawsuit filed against the tech and retail giant.
Days after it started its final sale, Zoolily accused Amazon of using anti-competitive tactics to stifle its business by pushing merchants off Zoolily's platform and preventing Zoolily from offering consumers prices lower than those on Amazon.com. The allegations mirror those made by the Federal Trade Commission in a sweeping anti-trust lawsuit filed against Amazon in September. Amazon has disputed the allegations by both Zoolily and the FTC, end quote.
Couple of year-end stories here right now, and this first one speaks to the year of the tech turnaround that we've been talking about in recent weeks. What has been the best performing tech stock of 2023? Would it surprise you to learn that it was by now a pay-later company, a firm, who stock grew 430 percent outperforming all US tech companies worth more than $5 billion this year and rebounding from a 90 percent fall last year, going CNBC.
The next best performer was Coinbase, which shot up 423 percent largely because of Bitcoin's rebound. The Federal Reserve setting the stage for interest rate cuts in the year ahead and more retailers signing on to a firm's by now pay-later offerings or BNPL. Fear of a doomsday scenario for the company has faded. Shares of a firm got a big boost in November after the company inked an expanded partnership with Amazon and by now pay-later purchases hit an all-time high on Cyber Monday.
The expectation was the consumer was going to be toast, unemployment was going to pick up and higher interest rates would destroy everything and the exact opposite has happened on all fronts, said Tom Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital, which doesn't have a position in the stock. So that's why you have a scenario where a firm can start to perform end quote.
Graded in 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, a firm is competing with companies including Clarna, blocks after pay and zip in the burgeoning BNPL market, shoppers who choose to pay with BNPL service, split their purchases into four or more installments typically over a period of three months to a year, often without accruing compounding interest. The lenders make money from interest payments and by charging merchants fees to offer their lending services.
A firm shares started climbing higher in August after the company's fiscal fourth quarter earnings report. The company picked up new merchant deals and sectors beyond retail such as travel, wireless ticketing and healthcare. The stock has more than doubled in the fourth quarter, boosted by an announcement last week that a firm would offer BNPL loans at Walmart's self checkout kiosks. And after their dramatic bounce back, a firm's shares are about 70% below their high in November 2021.
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Yes, I feel like we've been saying consolidation is coming in the streaming wars for years now but next year it really is coming. Quoting the financial times. Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Comcast and Paramount US entertainment conglomerates that have been growing ever larger for decades are facing pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses from their digital platforms.
Beyond their streaming losses the traditional media groups are facing a weak advertising market declining television revenues and higher production costs following the Hollywood strikes. Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Lightshed Partners said Paramount's deal discussions recently were a reflection of the complete and utter panic in the industry.
TV advertising is falling far short, court cutting is continuing to accelerate sports costs are going up and the movie business is not performing he said. Everything is going wrong, that can go wrong, the only thing the companies know how to do to survive is try to merge and cut costs and quote. But as the traditional media owner Struggle Netflix, the tech group that pioneered the streaming model over a decade ago has emerged as the winner of the battle to reshape video distribution.
For much of the past four years the entertainment industry spent money like drunken sailors to fight the first salvos of the streaming wars, analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in November, now we are finally starting to feel the hangover and the weight of the unpaid bar bill. For companies that have been trying to compete with Netflix, Nathanson added the shakeout has begun. After a bumpy 2022 Netflix has set itself apart from rivals most notably by being profitable.
Earnings for its most recent quarter sword pass wall streets expectations as it added 9 million new subscribers, the strongest rise since early 2020 when COVID-19 lockdowns led to a jump. Netflix has pulled away, says John Martin, co-founder of Pugeless Capital and former chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. For its rivals, he said the question is, quote, how do you create a viable streaming service with a viable business model? Because they're not working.
The leading streaming services aggressively raised prices in 2023, now analysts, investors and executives predict that consolidation could be ahead next year as some of the smaller services combined or bow out of the streaming wars. As we've discussed recently, the most likely to consolidate would be probably Warner Brothers and Paramount. And if they were to combine forces, analysts say they could likely save something in the neighborhood of $1 billion in synergies.
And finally today, remember earlier in the year when Apple made noises about getting the Mac into gaming in a big way? Well Raymond Wong at Inverse says that's coming to quote, max with Apple Silicon really are performant computers that can play some of the latest PC and console games. In three generations of desktop-class chip design, Apple has created a platform with tens of millions of Apple Silicon Macs according to Keppel.
That's tens of millions of Macs with monstrous CPU and GPU capabilities for running graphics intensive games. Apple's upgrades to the GPUs on its Silicon are especially impressive. The latest Apple Silicon, the M3 family of chips supports hardware accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading features that only a few years ago didn't seem like they would ever be a priority, let alone ones that are built into the entire spectrum of MacBook Pros.
This unified hardware platform approach is similar to what you get with a console like the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series SX. With the same architecture, there's a guarantee that every Mac with a certain chipset generation can run a certain game at optimal settings right out of the box, as opposed to leaving it to gamers to figure out whether their PC specs are enough. Much like consoles, Brooks says that it's all in service to the experience that users have when they fire up a game.
My own testing supports the efficiency 3D games like Lies of P and Resident Evil 4, run just as well on a MacBook Pros battery as they do when plugged in. The same can't be said for gaming laptops that often lose a sizeable amount of performance on battery. And while Mac users can go and fiddle with game settings to their hearts content just like they can on PC, not having to think about them is best suited for most players.
Best of all, developers don't need to do any extra work to get the benefits of dynamic caching because it's built right into the silicon. At the end of the day, consumers don't care about any of these changes happening mostly in the background. They only care whether or not the games they want to play are available on the platform of their choice. Apple is betting that expanding the library of games on the Mac isn't a matter of if but when. The hardware is powerful enough.
It's providing developers with the necessary tools to bring their games to the Mac. The software optimizations in Mac OS are happening. There's even the ability to play on multiple Apple devices. It's spinning all of the necessary gears releasing games monster even years after their launch on other platforms helps pat out the max library. But the real test is going to be whether or not Apple can bring in the new hits and it can't just be a handful of AAA titles every year.
There's no way around it. Apple needs to roll up its sleeves and start schmoozing developers and publishers or maybe even buy some game makers. I'll a Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard. One game that could single-handedly give Apple a gaming edge is Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar's sixth installment of its immensely popular open-world game is currently slated for a release on PS5 and Xbox Series S slash X in 2025.
Assuming the PC version will launch between one and a half and two years after like it did for GTA 5, we could calculate that a Mac version would either release simultaneously or shortly after sometime by 2027. More than a decade after its release, GTA 5 is still not available for Mac OS. If by the end of the 2020's GTA 6 is not on the Mac then something will have gone horribly wrong. The gaming industry is projected to be worth $389 billion by 2028.
Its Apple's market to lose and the company will have let another generation of gaming slip out of its hands. If it fails to capture the flag this time it might not get another chance to redeem itself with gamers. Nothing for you today, you know the drill.