NewsBytes Briefing: Hackers expose massive surveillance oversight, and more
What's the story
Hackers broke into the secure networks of Verkada Inc., which provides video surveillance and facial recognition solutions to Tesla, Cloudflare, and several government organizations. By "broke in," we mean it used the publicly exposed master password to simply log into their network.
Turns out, Verkada has unrestricted access to the security feeds of its customers, which include sensitive places, such as hospitals and prisons.
It gets worse
Infosys believes hacking is terrible and no one disagrees
Even as everyone got hacked by the Chinese in the last few weeks, Infosys has been busy crunching numbers. It contends that the top 100 brands stand to lose $223 billion through data breaches.
In reality, Chinese hackers go well beyond being just a corporate nuisance. Everything from the recent NSE blackout to cyberattacks on Indian power grid/ports is being linked to cyberwarfare.
Red Alert
Russia, China join forces heralding the next space race
In another news, Russia has refused to sign the Artemis Accords with the US for Moon missions. It has instead partnered with China to build lunar bases and prepare it for future human presence.
However, the most interesting bit involves the Chinese department being dubbed the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Forget space race, this might shape into a space war.
An uphill task
WhatsApp dreams of traceable encrypted messages to appease Indian government
Speaking of war, the fight between the Indian government and WhatsApp over its shady data sharing practices continues to wage on. However, the once defiant company is now willing to compromise.
WhatsApp head honcho Will Cathcart is somehow trying to juggle the government's demand to ensure traceability of messages with its encryption system. We aren't really sure how it'll achieve these mutually exclusive goals.
Slowing down
Russia has found a unique way to punish Twitter
Social media is being used as a tool for regime change, and that has world leaders spooked. However, even as several countries, including India, try to wrestle with Twitter over absolute control, Russia has found a novel way to keep it in check.
Russia's media watchdog claims the government has been slowing Twitter down to a crawl after its refusal to remove 3,000 posts.