Intel CPU “secure enclaves” aren’t that secure anymore thanks to a fresh Line Value Injection vulnerability
Telstra told it can continue using payphones as billboards, just stick to advertising phone related stuff
Coronavirus, coronavirus, coronavirus, coronavirus
Huawei’s upcoming phones aren’t gonna have many apps and their workaround for it kinda sucks
Cheap Xiaomi air purifier, Cities: Skylines for Swich, Aldi 6000mAh powerbank, Kogan mech keyboard, 8TB HDD
Intel has had a shit run with CPU security lately (Spectre & Meltdown) and now there's a new vulnerability for Intel to deal with - Line Value Injection. This one works in a similar fashion to the other ones, but takes it a step further by allowing for the "raiding of secrets stored in the SGX enclave, the name often used for Intel's Software Guard eXtensions. Apps that work with encryption keys, passwords, digital rights management technology, and other secret data often use SGX to run in a fortified container known as a trusted execution environment". Like Spectre and Meltdown, there's no fix for this, just mitigations and it's also unlikely that this attack will be used against consumer machines as it's pretty complicated to pull off. There's more info about LVI on Bitdefender's website.
A little while ago I wrote about the Melbourne City Council taking the provider of Telstra's payphones (some company called Urbis) to court for skirting around public advertising rules by slapping giant ugly digital signage on payphones. The council argued that Telstra was only upgrading the payphones so they could install the huge signs, not because the payphones needed upgrades or even need to be there in the first place. They reckon these new payphones should come under the same rules as other forms of digital signage like a bus stop, bench or similar public furniture. A judge has heard the case and found in Telstra's favour, allowing them to keep doing what they're doing - with the catch that if they show ads that aren't for phone services, they gotta give the council a cut.
Coronavirus is sucking up all the news oxygen, so here's a dump of tech adjacent coronavirus info:
E3's 2020 expo isn't happening. Chances are the big players (Sony, Nintendo, etc) will do some kinda stream instead to make their usual announcements.
Google told all its North American employees to stay home and log on to do their work.
People are setting their Tinder profile locations to Wuhan and chatting to locals about what it's like to be quarantined without the state media spin.
Nintendo's Ring Fit Adventure game for the Switch is selling out across the USA as people prepare themselves for lock-downs, but still want some physical activity.
The Iranian government made an app to "test and keep track of COVID-19 infections" that's been removed by Google from the Play Store because it wrongly claimed to detect infections.
The White House is meeting with Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Apple and Microsoft for help to "coordinate efforts over the coronavirus outbreak".
Santa Clara county has banned mass gatherings, so Apple’s WWDC is probably off the table for 2020.
MIT is shifting all its classes online for the rest of the semester.
Huawei's P40 Pro flagship smartphone is getting announced on March 26th via an online event (thanks coronavirus), but we already know it won't ship with Google services (thanks Trump administration). In practice, this means that despite the awesome specs it will likely have, it'll lack the apps people who drop $1500+ on a smartphone expect to use on their new fancy phone. Ausdroid has taken a look at what is and isn't available on AppGallery, Huawei's Google Play Store equivalent and was told by Huawei that users will be able to transfer apps they had installed on older devices, over to their new phone with Huawei's "Phone Clone" feature. If there's an app you really want that isn't on AppGallery (e.g: Instagram) you can transfer it from your old phone to your new one - but I don't think the apps will get updates as there's no app store method of receiving new versions and that is pretty damn shit when you can get a Pixel or even a Samsung that's like 99% as good (but more expensive) and not have that problem. Total deal breaker for Huawei phones I reckon.
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