An investigation by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has revealed that Huawei is the "biggest corporate sponsor of overseas travel for Australia's federal politicians". Since 2010, Huawei has paid for 12 Australian politicians and their entourages to visit Shenzhen and tour Huawei's HQ - you assume, butter up these gullible politicians so Huawei is remembered when it's time for them to decide on policy relating to Huawei's interest. I don't really blame Huawei for doing this, it is legal after all (wtf, right?), I find it more of an issue that the politicians actually bother going despite the bad impression it creates.
Two bits of gaming news today. A team competing in The International 2018, a massive Dota 2 eSports tournament with a $15m prize pool (fuckkkk meee), has been kicked out because of an illegal mouse. Peruvian team Thunder Predator, used a Razer Synapse 3 gaming mouse with programmable buttons. This is a big no no and the tournament organisers reckons using a programmable mouse is the same as using a software script to cheat. Over in South Korea, a dude was sent to jail for a year because he sold an Overwatch hack, violating the "Game Industry Promotion Law and Information and Communication Technology Protection Law". They take this shit seriously - hard time for a video game hack!
Back in 2007, AT&T tech Mark Klein and PBS Frontline showed us the infamous Room 641A in AT&T's San Francisco data centre that had NSA's fibre optic taps and spying gear installed. Today, The Intercept has revealed more info on the collaboration between the NSA and AT&T on a surveillance program code-named FAIRVIEW. The NSA set up operations in AT&T's downtown data centres in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C - crucial parts of internet infrastructure that not only have vast amounts of AT&T customer's data flowing through, but also the gear of other ISPs that want to talk to AT&T's customers too. The co-operation of just AT&T, at just these 8 data centres allowed the NSA to have a massive overview of all internet traffic in the USA.
Apple has released the first public beta of iOS 12, tvOS 12 and macOS Mojave. Earlier betas were only for registered and paid up developers, but now any old bum can whack test software on their primary machine and whinge when stuff doesn't work. Honestly though, it's a good way for Apple to get on top of major bugs before the release version that people like me who don't want to waste time with an unfinished product, will install on their devices. Macstories has a list of the interesting stuff in iOS 12 if you want to tempt yourself into installing the beta on your devices. I'm kinda tempted to install macOS Mojave on an external SSD so I can use the black UI on my iMac Pro.
WPA3, the more secure successor to the wi-fi security standard WPA2, is now an official thing. After a while in the draft stages, devices can now be certified as WPA3 compatible. If you want to take advantage of WPA3 (you will), you'll need your devices to be updated to support it - new hardware isn't required. WPA2 devices can still connect with WPA3 devices and vice-versa, just with less security. WPA3 has nifty security features like forward secrecy and "Easy Connect", so setting up IoT devices is just a matter of scanning a QR code on your smartphone. Nothing on the market right now supports WPA3 and apparently it won't really be a thing until 802.11ax comes on the market in 2020, as 802.11ax is designed with WPA3 in mind.
Here's a nifty Wordpress plugin for any webmasters (do people still call themselves that?) or bloggers out there that haven't sold their souls to Medium or Facebook: Passwords Evolved. It ties in to the wonderful Have I Been Pwnd API and checks user password hashes for hashes that match those on the huge list of compromised passwords. This makes sure people are using different passwords on your site, so they don't get hacked - particularly admin/editor roles that have access to sensitive info and settings.
Here's some NBN related facts straight from the horses mouth for ya: the average user downloads 190GB and uploads 17.5GB of data per month. The median usage is 108GB of downloads and 7GB of uploads a month. The top user, Australia's most problematic customer for an ISP sucks down 23.59TB of data a month. What the hell is this person doing? I hope it's something constructive like scientific data that's being used to provide a wonderful innovation (narrator: it's porn). So there you go, aren't you glad your brain now contains that information?
That's it, see ya tomorrow!
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.
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