DP World is one of the largest port operators in Australia (and the world), handling up to 40% of the goods that flow in and out of our country, and it got absolutely owned in a "cyber incident" Friday night. Don't know what happened but they've halted operations at container terminals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Fremantle since Friday after "pulling the plug" on internet connectivity at these sites once they discovered they've been hacked. According to DP World it'll still be a few more days until things are up and running again. The Australian Federal Police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre are assisting in this "nationally significant incident".
Looks like not only did Google offer Spotify a special discount in order to avoid them bypassing the Play Store's in-app purchase system, they did it for Netflix too. According to documents and testimony in the Epic vs Google trial currently happening in San Francisco, Google came up with a program called "LRAP++" (Living Room Accelerator Program) that only Netflix was invited to take place in, where instead of the usual 15%/30% cut Google takes for an in-app purchase, it was only 10%. Netflix still didn't go for it, preferring to re-direct users to sign up on the web (because Google doesn't allow where they pay roughly 3%, saving them almost US$250m/yr. Maybe if Google wasn't so damn greedy and charged 3%-5% for in-app purchases instead of 10%, they'd get 3-5% of something rather than 0%.
ASIC's latest "cyber pulse survey" of almost 700 ASIC regulated financial businesses found that 58% have "limited to no capability to digitally protect confidential information", 44% "don't manage third-party or supply chain risks" and nearly a third "failed to perform vulnerability scans of assets, with a substantial proportion showing limited capabilities in monitoring unauthorised connections, devices and software, baselining normal network activity, performing vulnerability scans and patching information assets". Only 52% "have strong capabilities in recovery planning after an incident" and a third said "they don't have strategies to deal with the repercussions of an incident". Fucken hell, this is grim. Full report on ASIC's website if you need to rattle some executive cages.
I love a good biopic, Chopper, Ted K, Bronson and Oppenheimer, just to name a few of the good ones that I bothered logging on my Letterboxd account. There's a good chance then, I will watch the recently announced Elon Musk biopic. It will be based on the Walter Isaacson book (which I haven't read and do not intend to read), directed by Darren Aronofsky (who's movies I typically do not enjoy - but I'm yet to watch The Whale) and produced by A24 (who have an excellent track record of movies I do like). Musk probably does deserve a movie about him, but ideally it happens when he's dead so you can really say what you want about the guy and not worry about getting sued, turning the movie into a 120 minute suck fest.
Victoria Life Sciences Computation Initiative's IBM Blue Gene/Q at University of Melbourne, photo taken June 27, 2012. (IBM Research / Flickr)
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