Researchers find a 12-year-old vulnerability in Polkit that local attackers can use to gain root privileges on all major Linux distributions; an exploit is out
A vulnerability in Polkit's pkexec component that is present in the default configuration of all major Linux distributions … Source: Qualys Security Blog .
The IMF's board urges El Salvador to strip Bitcoin of its status as legal currency due to its large risks, a major obstacle to the country's $1.3B loan request
The International Monetary Fund's board urged El Salvador to strip Bitcoin of its status as legal currency due to its large risks … Source: International Monetary Fund .
Microsoft Q2: revenue of $51.7B, up 20% YoY, net income of $18.8B, up 21% YoY, Windows OEM revenue up 25%, LinkedIn revenue up 37%, and Surface revenue up 8%
Earnings Release FY22 Q2 - REDMOND, Wash. — January 25, 2022 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results …
Sources: Meta-backed Diem Association is talking to investment bankers about selling its IP to return capital to investors and giving its engineers a new home
The controversial cryptocurrency project that Mark Zuckerberg once defended in front of Congress is unraveling after regulatory pressure.
Microsoft plans to launch a public preview of Android apps for Windows 11, taskbar improvements, redesigned Notepad and Media Player, and more next month
New Notepad and Media Player apps also on the way — Microsoft is planning to launch a public preview of its Android apps for Windows 11 next month …
Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's gaming head who oversaw big deals to poach Twitch's star streamers, leaves to grow Ethereum scaling startup Polygon's developer ecosystem
Ryan Wyatt will be at YouTube until the end of February — Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's head of gaming who oversaw some of its big deals …
Activision Blizzard declines to voluntarily recognize a union formed by 34 QA testers at Raven Software, after failing to reach an agreement with the CWA
Activision Blizzard did not respond to workers' request for recognition of a union formed by quality assurance testers at Raven Software, the workers said Tuesday evening.
Sources: Microsoft will keep Activision Blizzard agreements for three new Call of Duty games on PlayStation in the next two years, but long-term plans are hazy
Activision Blizzard Inc., which is being bought by Microsoft Corp., will release at least the next three games in its hit Call …
After reports of AirTags being used for stalking, Apple releases a Personal Safety User Guide, covering AirTags alerts, information for Android users, and more
Apple has launched a new “Personal Safety User Guide” that aggregates details and support documents that can help users “when your personal safety is at risk.” Source: Apple .
Chinese smartphone sales fell 9% YoY in Q4 2021 as full-year sales dropped 2% YoY; Apple became China's top vendor in Q4 after six years with 23% marketshare
- Smartphone sales in China declined (9% YoY) for the third consecutive quarter in Q4 2021. — Full-year smartphone sales declined …
Crypto exchange FTX's American affiliate, FTX.US, raises $400M at an $8B valuation from Paradigm, SoftBank, and others, its first outside funding
FTX's American affiliate, FTX.US, has joined the crypto unicorn club after closing its first-ever fundraising round.
President Biden backs consumers' right to repair and acknowledges the anticompetitive practices of electronics manufacturers
“Too many areas, if you own a product, from a smartphone to a tractor, you don't have the freedom to choose how or where to repair that item you purchased.”
Sources: Amazon has abandoned its much-maligned campaign of paying warehouse employees to share positive messages on social media after embarrassing backfires
Paying warehouse workers to tweet positive comments is dropped after poor reach and embarrassing backfires
EU General Court overturns a record €1.06B fine for Intel, levied in 2009 over allegedly squeezing out AMD, saying the EU made key errors
Intel Corp. won a historic victory in its court fight over a record 1.06 billion-euro ($1.2 billion) competition fine, in a landmark ruling …
In a YouTube creator update, Susan Wojcicki defends hiding dislikes, discusses adding NFT support, says creators making over $10K/year jumped 40% YoY, and more
YouTube is touting the explosive popularity of its TikTok-style short-form Shorts video feature — and says it's going to test …
Satya Nadella says Microsoft Teams topped 270M MAUs in the December quarter, up from 250M MAUs in July 2021
Todd Bishop / GeekWire :
How hacker Joe Grand used a fault-injection attack to crack a Trezor One hardware wallet to recover $2M in cryptocurrency for two friends who forgot the PIN
In early 2018, Dan Reich and a friend decided to spend $50,000 in Bitcoin on a batch of Theta tokens, a new cryptocurrency then worth just 21 cents apiece.
The White House instructs agencies to move towards a zero trust cybersecurity strategy, including using hardware-based authentication tools
Federal departments will have two months to outline their response — The White House released a new cybersecurity strategy Wednesday aimed …
Microsoft's cloud revenue grew 32% YoY to $22.1B in Q2, with Intelligent Cloud revenue of $18.3B, up 26% YoY, and Azure and other cloud service revenue up 46%
Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal :
Klarna launches its Visa-based Klarna Card in the UK, expanding on Sweden and Germany where it has 800,000 users; the card includes Klarna's “Pay in 30” feature
Ryan Browne / CNBC :
The US Commerce Department says the global chip shortage will stretch into at least H2 2022, based on information from 150+ companies in the chip supply chain
MinIO, which offers popular open source tools for multi-cloud storage, raises a $103M Series B at a $1B valuation
MinIO, the de facto open source standard for multi-cloud storage, took an early bet in the cloud. The bet is paying off. — Back in 2014, the world was a different place.
Criminals laundered $8.6B in cryptocurrency in 2021, up from $6.6B in 2020 but below $10.9B in 2019; exchanges received 47% of the funds and DeFi received 17%
This blog is a preview of our 2022 Crypto Crime Report. Sign up here to reserve your copy and we'll email you the full report when it comes out in February!
Google shutters FLoC, its controversial ad tech for replacing third-party cookies, and proposes Topics, which categorizes the sites users visit into 300+ topics
Samsung announces its Galaxy Unpacked “The Epic Standard” event will be held virtually on February 9 at 7am PT, where it's expected to unveil the Galaxy S22
get ready for Galaxy S22 Gary Ng / iPhone in Canada Blog : Samsung Announces Galaxy Unpacked 2022 Event on February 9 Florence Ion / Gizmodo : Samsung Is Revealing Something ‘Epic’ at Its Next Galaxy ...
CaptivateIQ, a no-code service for creating sales commission plans, raises a $100M Series C at a $1.25B valuation, after raising a $46M Series B in April 2021
Less than 10 months after raising a $46 million Series B, CaptivateIQ announced today that it has raised $100 million in a Series C round at a $1.25 billion valuation.
Huawei launches its foldable P50 Pocket and flagship P50 Pro in the UK and Europe, but not the US, running Android without Google services and 5G
COCOA GOLD — CHARM PINK — GOLDEN BLACK Peter / GSMArena.com : The Huawei P50 Pro and P50 Pocket go on pre-order in Europe Jason Cipriani / ZDNet : Huawei expands P50 Pro and P50 Pocket availabilit...
UK-based quantum cryptography startup PQShield, spun out from Oxford's research labs, raises a $20M Series A led by Addition
Quantum computing promises to unlock a new wave of processing power for the most complex calculations, but that could prove to be just as harmful as it is helpful …
The FTC and Fashion Nova reach a $4.2M settlement over allegations that the fast-fashion clothing site suppressed product reviews of less than four stars
Google's three years of security updates for its older phones like 2018's Pixel 3 is planned obsolescence; new Pixels get five years of support vs. iPhones' ~6
Google calls that a ‘great experience’ Ben Schoon / 9to5Google : Google still thinks 3 years of updates provide a ‘great experience’ ahead of cutting off Pixel 3 Arthur Brown / Android Headlines : Goo...
Live events service Fever raises $227M led by Goldman Sachs at a $1B+ valuation as it plans an IPO
Live events platform Fever raised $227 million in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a sign that post-pandemic live events can attract investor interest.
A look at the dispute between Muslim marriage matchmaking app Muzmatch, which has 5M global users, and Match, which says Muzmatch benefits from a similar name
Since launching Muzmatch out of his bedroom in north London a decade ago, Shahzad Younas has worked 18-hour days to build the Muslim marriage app with 5m users worldwide. Tweets: @fqure and @muradahme...
VR game studio Alta raises a $12.4M seed led by Makers Fund and a16z at a $62M valuation after releasing a popular Oculus game
Alta, a virtual reality metaverse studio, announced today it has raised a 12.4 million seed funding co-led by Makers Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.
Twitter: governments made 43,387 content removal demands from a record 196,878 accounts in H1 2021; 95% came from Japan, Russia, Turkey, India, and South Korea
Twitter permanently suspended 453,754 unique accounts for violations of its child sexual exploitation policy — Twitter suspended 44,974 unique accounts for promotion of terrorism and violent organizat...
A survey of 100 IT firms with 5,000+ employees: 65% say that they or their employees were approached to help ransomware hackers establish insider access
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer :
DappRadar: the ~150 active DeFi-related apps hold ~$107B in user funds, down $30B from the start of 2022, as the overall crypto market sags
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg :
Spanish e-commerce delivery service Paack, which offers software tools that integrate with robotics, raises a €200M Series D led by Vision Fund 2
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch :
The immediate threat of attackers mass exploiting Log4Shell was averted because the severity of the bug galvanized digital and security communities into action
Chester Wisniewski / Sophos News :
Sources: China's state-backed chipmaking company Tsinghua Unigroup has abandoned memory projects in two cities as US sanctions limit access to vital components
Nikkei Asia :
OpenSea launches a new listing manager to mitigate a UI issue that let attackers flip NFTs at below-market rates, which it says was “not an exploit or a bug”
Eliza Gkritsi / CoinDesk :
Manila-based GrowSari, which helps Filipino MSMEs to digitize, offer bill payments, launch e-commerce stores, and more, raises $45M from KKR
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch :
Poland-based Infermedica, whose AI tools offer symptom analysis and patient triage, raises a $30M Series B led by One Peak, bringing its total funding to $45M
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch :
Domain Money, a stock and crypto trading app with actively managed investment strategies, launches with $33M from Bessemer Ventures, Marc Benioff, and others
Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg :
SparkCognition, which uses AI to help companies predict outcomes, optimize processes, and prevent cyberattacks, raises a $123M Series D at a $1.4B+ valuation
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat :
Self-driving shuttle startup May Mobility, which operates 25 vehicles in nine cities including Arlington, Texas, and Hiroshima, Japan, raises an $83M Series C
Gabrielle Coppola / Bloomberg : Tweets: @business Tweets: @business : May Mobility, a self-driving shuttle startup backed by the venture arms of Toyota and BMW, raised $83 million in its largest fund...
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.