Tech News: VPN Fails and Apple Vulnerabilities

The New York Times is Max Fisher wrote a piece earlier this week titled Disinformation for Higher A shadow industry is quietly booming. And the contents of that piece will likely come as no surprise to anyone who has kept up with the ongoing mess that is misinformation and disinformation campaigns and the platforms that facilitate the spread of those campaigns.

And it probably isn't a surprise that there are a collection of companies that are kind of acting as guns for hire to run and promote disinformation campaigns on behalf of their clients. And it gives those clients kind of a bit of distance from the cd and unethical campaigns themselves. Right, If you want to have a smear campaign against say a political rival. You'd rather not have that come back to you if you're saying a lot of things that are just legit not true. Anyway, we saw all of

this years ago with Cambridge Analytica. That was kind of a an example of this, although they did other stuff too, and that company was actually fairly clumsy when it all comes down to it. I mean that that house of cards came crashing in on itself. But on the flip side, there's also money to be made in fighting disinformation. So we're also seeing startups come up to fight disinformation while others are actively promoting it. So startups like Active Fence

are fighting disinformation. So we've got two sides of an information war, both of which have turned this fight into a profitable business. There's probably something really smart I could say here about the whole situation and maybe about capitalism, but I'm just going to leave that to someone who's better equipped than I to make that observation. But just like typical right anyway, Active Fence recently announced that it has raised one million dollars in investments and is developing

a suite of tools to help detect misinformation campaigns. UH. The company is using artificial intelligence as a way to kind of crawl across various social platforms and not just examine posts, but to look for connections between different accounts and different groups, and those connections can point to concerted efforts to spread, you know, a specific message or undermine

some other message. As we continue to deal with misinformation campaigns around the world that deal with everything from politics to workers rights, to vaccinations and beyond, it becomes more important to be able to weed out the bad stuff and to give people more opportunities to understand when they're actually being manipulated and by whom and for what purpose.

That's incredibly valuable information to have, assuming that you actually take the effort to look into it and not just allow information to confirm maybe preconceived biases or prejudices you might have, or to comfort you into thinking that something that is your fault is totally not your fault. Like all those kind of earmarks for how misinformation can really

get its hooks in, Uh, it's hard to overcome. My guess is we're gonna see a continued escalation between the companies that are offering to handle disinformation campaigns and the ones providing the tools to fight those campaigns and it'll just keep getting messy. That's my, you know, incredibly obvious prediction. Alright,

switching gears, let's talk about cybersecurity and software vulnerabilities. So for many years, Apple products were seen as sort of being bulletproof, and there were a couple of really big major reasons for this. There are lots of reasons, but two really big ones, and one was that Apple notoriously follows a walled garden strategy in which the company makes not only the operating systems, but the actual hardware that those OS is run upon. Now, if you do this correctly,

you can actually cut down on potential vulnerabilities. You know, you don't have different companies making different pieces and thus creating the potential for gaps insecurity as much. It can still happen, but it gives you a leg up. The second big factor was that Apple, for many years had much lower percentage of the market share when it came

to operating systems. So if you were a batty and you wanted to make malicious software and your goal was to affect the largest number of people you could, you would focus on Windows based devices, Windows based computers. Like this is before the smartphone era, and that's because Windows was on way more computer systems than mac OS was, so it just made more sense you were going to hit more targets if you aimed for Windows users. But these factors do not make Apple immune to the problem

of malware. They're not, you know, completely uh bulletproof, as I was saying. The Register actually reports that Apple recently patched a zero day vulnerability in its various OS products, including mac os and iOS, just yesterday on Monday, a week earlier. The company issued updates to the various operating systems to fix some other issues, and the patched vulnerability

was in a screen frame buffer. Uh. That's a feature that, if it had been exploited by a hacker, could be used to uh to to run malware, to execute malware. The Register also reports that someone, though at the time that I'm recording this, I don't know who, had been exploiting that bug in some way. Uh. That could potentially be the n s O group, that's the that's the company that's behind the Pegasus spyware that I talked about

last week, the one out of Israel. At least one security researcher has said that they knew about this particular bug for several months, but did not report it that they were working on their own kind of bigger report that was going to incorporate this as part of it, which is you know, a yikes. Anyway, this is one of those things that really stinks for the end consumers because bad actors can easily exploit vulnerabilities like these and use some fairly simple attacks to get people to fall

prey to them. I mean, the the NSO groups. Pegasus uses a zero click attack through messengers like I Message, and that that's very hard to avoid. Gizmoto has an article listing the various Windows ten features that are going to go away when Windows eleven launches, or rather Windows eleven isn't going to include them. If you keep running

Windows ten, you'll still have access to these features. You know, each time Microsoft updates its flagship operating system, we get some new features and we say goodbye to some of the older ones, and it doesn't always end up feeling like it was a fair trade. So what is heading out this time? Well, Internet Explorer will finally be really most sincerely dead, at least on Windows eleven. Microsoft hasn't

really supported i E in a while. They moved to the Edge web Browser instead, but they kept it around for folks who refused to use Edge. UH and Windows ten still had Internet Explorer as an option, but that will not be the case with Windows eleven. Another feature going away is the synchronization feature called Timeline. So the idea behind Timeline is that you could essentially link different Windows based machines that you work on and have them

synchronize your activities across the machines. So let's say you've got two Windows based computers in your house, and you're on one of those computers and you open up a word document in your one drive, and you work on it for a while, and you say that you close out. Then you move to your other computer. Later on in the day, you open up Word and that document would be in your recent documents list in Word, even though it was a totally different computer, because Timeline was synchronizing

these activities across the two devices. That is going away with Windows eleven. I'm sure there'll be some comparable feature, but it's not Timeline. Another thing that's going away are live tiles, which I forgot we're even a thing for Windows tin. I've never used them. These are little tiles that you could put on the Windows tin desktop. They can display live information, so you could have a tile that has like a news ticker, that kind of thing.

It looks like when Microsoft is going to go back to widgets for Windows eleven, which really aren't that different from live tiles, I suppose, and I guess maybe this will be the Windows where widgets really pay off. I don't spend a whole lot of time looking at my desktop, so maybe I'm just not the right person for these kinds of features because I typically have programs on full

screen all the time. I've got multiple monitors and each one has got a full screen program on it, because I find lots of open windows in the same view to be too cluttery. But when Whendows eleven, I'm gonna put the widgets back. I don't think I'll be using them, but they'll be there. Windows eleven will also remove your ability to place your taskbar on whichever edge of the screen you want, and now the task bar will live at the bottom of the screen and you'll like it.

And I actually do happen to like having the test bar at the bottom of the screen. I get really irritated whenever I accidentally relocate the taskbar to some other part of the screen, which can sometimes happen if I'm being sloppy with my key strokes, and then something I can't find my start button because it's at a different spot of the screen. So I'm totally okay with Windows eleven anchoring it at the bottom. Windows eleven is also

apparently going to de emphasize Cortana. That's the virtual assistant feature that's named after a character in the Halo video game franchise. Cortana will still be incorporated into Windows eleven, but won't occupy the same sort of screen real estate, nor will there be a Cortana segment in the setup process. And also Skype is going to get de emphasized as well. Microsoft's really pushing Microsoft Teams to be the main communication

tool on Windows based machines. There are a few other changes, but I recommend going over to gizmoto and reading up on the rest if you're thinking about upgrading to Windows eleven when it comes out later this year. We've got a few more news stories to cover, but first let's take a quick break. I got a hypothetical for you.

What happens if you run a company that's focused on online privacy tools, you know, like virtual private networks or VPNs, and you get caught out running unencrypted services, well you go into damage control, and that's kind of what's happening with the company wind describe. Wind Scribe offers virtual private networks or VPN services, and the way VPNs work, just from a really high level, is pretty simple. So you use a VPN client to log into a remote server

that is kind of standing as proxy for you. Then all of your Internet activity actually filters through this VPN server before it comes to you. Anyone who's snooping on your connection will only see that you are communicating with this VPN server. They won't be able to see what you're doing beyond that server. So let's say you're using a VPN to get past some regional controls, or you're trying to avoid having your Internet service provider know which

sites you're visiting. Maybe you're shopping for different I s p s and you would just prefer if the I s P you have doesn't know about that. These are all basic things that you could do, and this can be really important for protecting your security and your privacy. Now, it can also be used to hide your activity if you're up to no good. So there is a double edged sword here. But all of this really hinges on having the VPN servers protected with encryption as well as

a good policy with regard to record keeping. So in general, it's it's considered best practice if the VPN is not keeping activity log of its users, because if it is keeping activity logs a compromise server, it could potentially reveal all the stuff that the users were up to when

connecting to that specific server. Well, in the Ukraine, authorities seized a couple of VPN servers belonging to wind Scribe, and those servers proved to be poorly encrypted using an outdated methodology that has long since proven to be insecure. It's been deprecated. In other words, we don't use it

anymore because it's not reliable. The company has essentially copped to that, saying yeah, that is what happened, and they said that generally they encrypt servers that are considered to be in like high risk security areas, but they failed to do so appropriately in this case in the Ukraine, which I would think of as being a high security area considering the political issues that go on between the Ukraine and say Russia, and this opened up the potential

for someone to compromise the system. And Ours Technica has a really great piece about this. It's titled VPN servers seized by Ukrainian authorities weren't Encrypted. That article goes into a lot more detail about both the issue at hand

and wind scribes response. Also. Ours Technica wisely points out that VPN services have really taken off over the last few years, and there are a lot of different companies that are offering them, So it really pays to do your research to make sure that whichever service you're looking into is following the best practices of the industry in order to keep your activity the way Gandolf would want you to. You know, is it secret? Is it safe?

If it's not, don't use it. The Verge has a piece titled Vigilante app Citizen is paying users to live stream crime scenes and emergencies, which to me just sounds a lot like the plot to the film Nightcrawler starring Jake Jillenhall. If you haven't seen that movie, it's intense. It's not for everybody, but the movie follows Jake Jillenhall's character.

He's a man who finds out that he can make some pretty decent money if he's the first on the scene of like an awful accident or a grizzly crime, and he shoots footage of it, and then of course he gets more and more involved as it goes on. I won't spoil any more of it in case you want to watch it, but it is a pretty intense film. Well,

now there's an app for that. The company behind Citizen is offering between two hundred to two hundred fifty dollars a day for people to live stream quote unquote newsworthy events in their local area, so creating kind of a gig economy on on the ground instant reporting. The company expects applicants to not just point a camera at like a developing situation, but also to conduct interviews, like to

talk to witnesses and onlookers and the police. Now they're not supposed to interfere with police procedures or to put themselves in harm's way, but they are supposed to interview folks. Uh, this is I feel like it's active asking a heck of a lot from users. The skill set for being a good interviewer is a really nuanced and deep skill set. And I say this as someone who occasionally interviews folks and I have for a few years, but I still feel like I've got a good way to go but

to become a really great interviewer. And it just seems disastrous to open this up to me. Apparently, the company has folks in Los Angeles working ten hour shifts for two fifty bucks a day, which you know is better than minimum wage, but I imagine the work can get pretty risky for numerous reasons. Also, I don't know how the company works as far as paying people, Like if you're wandering around your area and it just happens to

be a quiet day, do you still get paid. Also, the Verge reports that there's some other disturbing things with this. For instance, Citizen, the company is apparently testing a private

security force, complete with patrol cars. Now Here in the United States, we're already in a situation in which a large segment of the population is calling for police reform or outright defunding the police, and it seems like creating private security forces, particularly when you take into consideration that Citizen used to go by the name Vigilante, can raise all sorts of red flags. Uh, certainly something that I'll

be following closely because this concerns me. It feels like it could very easily tip into mob justice territory, which which which can be truly disastrous Here in the US. During the previous presidential administration, the FCC launched the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, and the idea was that the FCC would grant subsidies to companies that would extend broadband connectivity to communities and agents in the US that lack broadband access.

In other words, like, we need to get these people connected, and here's an incentive for companies to to do that. They'll get these great subsidies in return, which is a pretty good idea, except the r d o F was riddled with flaws that made it relatively easy for companies to land those subsidies and then you know, not actually

provide services to rural or underserved areas. Some companies instead focused on building out services in places that actually already had broadband access, and that has led the f c C, which of course is now under new leadership because of a change in presidential administrations, to reach out to the companies that were granted subsidies and say, hey, buddy, either do what you were supposed to do or we want

our money back. And I think that's pretty darn keene as there are lots of folks out there who really lack any real access to broadband connectivity, and yet internet access is increasingly a critical component to being a citizen in the United States and just getting stuff done, particularly in a world that is still in the midst of

a pandemic. When you have news stories about school kids who have to go and sit in a parking lot because that's the only way they're able to get internet access in order to participate in school, that is a serious failing of society and it's one that needs to be addressed. The digital divide is not a new thing. It has been a thing for decades. It's just not getting better, and we need to do better. Well, we have a couple more stories to cover, but before I

get to that, let's take another quick break. The New York Times reports that a Toyota executive has been meeting with congressional leaders in d C in a move to push back against the planned path to adopting an all all electric vehicle approach. And we're seeing various places around the world go after fairly aggressive strategies to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles entirely, at least for new vehicles that is, and just move to all electric vehicles for

new cars. So to be clear, this doesn't mean that you know, existing internal combustion engine vehicles are going to all have to go to the scrap heap. No one's coming to take your Dodge charger or anything like that. It just means that in the future, like not that far out into the future, shopping for a new car will be all about electric vehicles because internal combustion engines

will no longer be in production. Now, apparently Toyota would really rather we hold off on doing that, as the company executive is trying to argue for hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to also be part of this conversation and they should also qualify as replacements for internal combustion engine vehicles, and that an all electric vehicle approach is

just the wrong way to go. This could be because Toyota might be lagging behind some other manufacturers when it comes to, you know, the plans to switch to e vs UH. I would say that including hybrids and fuel cell vehicles in the conversation, is not necessarily a bad idea. They can definitely help reduce greenhouse gas emissions if they are engineered properly, and they could have a legit seat at the table when it comes to transitioning away from

internal combustion engines. However, Toyota's approach is one that's not likely to win any supporters from those who want to see big changes in an effort to reduce the impact of climate change. So, in other words, it might just come across as the wrong move. Toyota has had some pretty notable, highly public pr issues in recent past that have to deal with politics, so we'll see if this

also adds to the fire. Intel, which was once the king of the hill when it comes to computer processors, has slipped a little bit in recent years, but according to the company's Intel Accelerated Virtual Event, the company has a plan to regain the top spot by and part of that strategy is a drum roll, please, a new way of naming processors. Now, a lot of chips reference the you know, size of components on a processor in the nanoscale, which is a number that just keeps getting

smaller in defiance of physics itself. But as I recently learned, those numbers don't necessarily actually reflect the actual components sizes on the chip. That's a matter for another podcast. I think I'm gonna have to do a full podcast about how misleading those numbers are because it surprised me, and I've been covering this stuff for years, so I need to do an episode about it. The new naming scheme will, according to Intel, create quote, a more accurate view of

process nodes across the end of street end quote. So what does that mean, I'm gonna pull a Teva from Fiddler on the Roof. I don't know, but this might help Intel move away from a nomenclature that is at best confusing and at worst misleading, and it might give the company the chance to show off what it's hardware can do without someone saying, yeah, but that number of a day is better than your number, and it comes

down to performance rather than naming conventions. In other words, and on that front, Intel's chips have been holding up pretty well. Actually, honestly, I'm just curious to see if this strategy is going to pay off for Intel the processor industry as a whole, has had a lot of shake ups recently, in large part because the pandemic has really disrupted business and caused massive delays for long term plans. So we'll just have to see how this all develops.

And finally, speaking of electricity, Dell and its subsidiary alien Ware, have a shocking problem, and that's the fact that several of the new alien Ware products those are like high performance gaming rigs that they exceed the power consumption regulations for states like California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, which means people in those states cannot actually order those

particular models and have them shipped to them. The company's website makes this clear for those specific models that if you order one and you happen to have a shipping address that's in one of those states, that order will not go through. So while the computers might go fast while they're sitting still, they ain't gonna be making their way to those states, at least not directly, because the

power consumption levels are just too high. On the one hand, this feels like it's just incredible access to me, right, Like you have a computer that is so juiced up for gaming that it's pulling way too much electricity, like more than some of your other appliances in your home. But on the other hand, I think this could be a gold mine for advertising. I imagine it alien ware

the computer so fast it's illegal in six states. I mean, sure, that's not entirely accurate, but I think it could move units. And that's it for the Tech News for July one. We will not have a tech News episode this Thursday. We have a new episode of Smart Talks coming out, but we'll have more news next week, and we'll have other episodes of tech Stuff obviously throughout the week. So if you have any suggestions for future topics I should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.

The handle for the show is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.