Tech News: Tech Strikes Back at Russia

Published Mar 1, 2022, 11:10 PM

The tech world has clamped down on Russia in the wake of the country's invasion of Ukraine. A cryptocurrency exchange founder is going to stand trial on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. And we say farewell to a man who co-developed Ethernet technology.

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Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how the tech are you? It is time for the tech news for March first, twenty twenty two, and this should come as no surprise, but the vast majority of the tech news today is revolving around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. First up, hackers compromise the websites of several Russian media outlets. Many of those outlets experienced outages on their websites. A few of those sites also displayed a message reading quote, Dear citizens, we urge you to stop this madness. Do not send your sons and husbands to certain deaths. Putin is forcing us to lie and is putting us in d We have been isolated from the whole world. They have stopped buying oil and gas. In a few years we will be living like North Korea. What is this for? So that Putin can get into the history books. It's not our war. Let's stop him end quote. So Russian media has reported that the responsible party was the activist group Anonymous and someone at least has claimed responsibility on behalf of Anonymous. Now, in case you're not familiar with Anonymous, it's a very loosely organized collection of hackers, activists, anarchists, and folks who fall on a pretty broad spectrum of mischief makers all the way up to cyber criminals. Occasionally, a significant percentage of Anonymous is you know, nebulous population will align on a cause, and a significant number of them will devote efforts to seeing that cause through. But the group is so amorphous that it often is pretty tricky to assign responsibility to them. In many cases, it might be a group of people who consider themselves part of the Anonymous, but they're acting independently of the overall group. That being said, a Twitter account named anonymous has called for hackers to dedicate their skills and resources toward hindering Russia's invasion efforts in every way possible. Of course, it's hard to say conclusively that the Twitter accountant has any real connection to the actual group, and this is partly how Anonymous can be so effective. It can claim or deny responsibility for just about anything with equal plausibility. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or T SMC, along with chip makers A M D and Intel, have suspended all semiconductor sales to Russia. This is to comply with US sanctions against Russia due to the Ukrainian invasion. Tsn CE is the big dog here, as the company produces approximately half of all semi conductors used around the world, whether we're talking the super powerful kind or the very simple kind in a you know, low powered mobile device. The company has suspended sales not just to Russia directly, but also too third parties that are known to provide products to Russia that use these t SMC semiconductors. Now, this is a blow to Russia, but the president of the semi Conductor Industry Association told The Washington Post that it's not a blow to the semiconductor industry because Russia only represents about point one percent of all semiconductor sales. So in other words, this is gonna hurt you a lot more than it's gonna hurt us, is kind of the message there. The text sanctions extend beyond hardware and into services. Google Pay and Apple Pay are no longer available to customers of certain Russian banks. From what I can tell, the services aren't total unavailable in all of Russia. There is some availability, but for anyone who uses those that are connected to accounts that belong to major banks targeted by the recent sanctions, those services are put Customers of those banks are no longer able to use any cards issued by the banks, as the foreign held assets in those banks have been frozen. The sanctions extend beyond that as well. Customers are not able to make online payments to companies registered in countries that have imposed these sanctions, namely the United States and members of the European Union. So this is really hampering a lot of Russian citizens in their daily lives. I started this episode talking about how hackers had compromised several Russian media sites within Russia. Well outside Russia, the country's media is facing some pretty tough opposition as well. Meta properties Facebook and Instagram have restricted social media access to Russian outlets today, and spot nick YouTube has also clamped down on those channels, as as TikTok. The EU has similarly placed a ban on Russian state media. So these media outlets are run by the government of Russia. Like everything that goes out on these outlets has been sanctioned by the government. And as such, these outlets tend to serve as propaganda outlets. They're pushing the government's narrative and worldview out to the public, so you could argue it's at least a skewed view, if not outright misinformation. In many cases, even before the Ukraine invasion began, sites were starting to clamp down on misinformation campaigns from these outlets that were meant to undermine support for Ukraine or to portray the invasion as a necessary and justified military action. Not only are we seeing sites close off opportunities for these media outlets to spread Russian propaganda, we've also seen Google and Meta goest ups further to prevent the Russian media from placing ads on their properties like YouTube or Google Search or Facebook. Meta also released an announcement on Sunday saying it had discovered and removed a pair of disinformation campaigns originating out of Russia and one out of Ukraine. According to Meta, the Russian campaign was the product of a group called ghost Writer, a known source of disinformation. Hackers with Ghostwriter had used phishing attacks on legit Facebook users to gain access to those users accounts and then post disinformation videos and messages on those accounts to try and spread the message. Meta has since blocked the domains that the hackers had been using in their phishing attempts and sent out notifications to affected users. The uk Crane group was slightly different. It was also launched in an effort to undermine Ukrainian efforts. It had fewer than four thousand accounts following its page. Is no telling how many of those accounts were just boughts uh that we're just designed to elevate the disinformation campaign. Russia has responded by saying it will restrict access to Facebook due to the company's quote unquote censorship. On a similar note, Netflix has reached a threshold size in Russia. Namely, it hit a milestone of reaching more than one hundred thousand subscribers, which you know, in the grand scheme of things, is not that many, but it is a level that would require Netflix to carry twenty Russian media channels on its service. Most of those channels are entertainment and sports related, but there are a few that are more dedicated to pushing out the government narrative. Now, all of this is according to a new law which is not in effect right now, or maybe it's just gone into effect. The information is not entirely clear. Today would have been the first day from what I understand, but this law requires any media platform, any ab based media platform of that size or larger, you know, reaching a hundred thousand subscribers or more, they would have to carry those Russian channels by this law. Netflix, however, said it will do no such thing. A spokesperson too said to Variety, quote, given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service end quote. So Netflix is currently the only foreign online media platform in Russia that meets the subscriber criteria of this new law. So this is a precedent that we're seeing set right here. There are other providers, like foreign providers like HBO Max that are active in Russia, but a lot of those providers are partnering with Russian platforms that are actually distributing the content. So while the source of the content might be from these other companies, the entity in Russia is a Russian one, so it's a different matter. Netflix doesn't do that. Netflix is going direct to Russian consumers. There's no word yet on lot, if any response. The Russian government will have to all of this, it is notable that Russia. Netflix doesn't have any offices in Russia, so while the Russian government might eventually order I s p s in the country to block Netflix, there's no physical location for the government to raid or lean on or anything like that. Twitter meanwhile announced yesterday that it will begin to label tweets from accounts that belong to or are linked to Russian state media outlets in order to show their affiliation their association with those outlets. So these labels will include an orange exclamation point to get users attention and to alert readers about the source of the information. Twitter also announced it will be dialing back the reach of those accounts, so that means fewer people should see the tweets in the first place. Like, if you've ever used Twitter, you've probably seen that there are occasionally stuff stuff that shows up in your feed where you're are like I don't follow this person, Like this isn't someone that I'm actively following, Why am I seeing their tweets? Well, you know, it's one of the ways that Twitter expands uh engagement and allows people to discover stuff that they might not otherwise see. So in this case, Twitter is essentially turning that dial down for these particular accounts in order to not have the disinformation campaigns expand. Uh. Further So, the platform is not going so far as to prevent the outlets from sending out messages entirely. They're not banning the outlets. Instead, Twitter is taking steps so that users will be aware of where information is coming from, and then the users can be able to to draw conclusions as to the motivations behind the messaging. So, in other words, Twitter isn't going so far as to say this isn't true, but rather more like, keep in mind where this tweet is coming from and don't just accept it on its face. All right, We've got a lot more news, including news about Russia and Ukraine. But before we get to any of that, let's take a quick break. After consulting with authorities in Ukraine, Google has temporarily disabled some of the features in Google Maps for regions within Ukraine, such as live traffic updates. The company made this move in an effort to protect citizens who might be seeking safety and specific parts of the city, provening Russian forces from targeting those areas specifically. This does, however, cut both ways, because there have have been researchers who have been using Google Maps to track the invasion forces, using that information to kind of infer where Russia's forces happen to be at any given time. Google has also said that people who are relying on turn by turn directions will still get information about traffic. So if there is someone navigating through a city in Ukraine, they aren't going to be blindsided by something it's affected traffic in the city if they're using the turn by turn directions, which I think is the responsible thing to do. Reddit has also taken steps to push back on Russian disinformation campaigns. The site has quarantined the subredits are slash Russia and are slash Russia politics, so a quarantine subreddit won't show up in searches or recommendations. Uh, the discovery ends up being cut way back. So essentially a redditor has to purposefully go to one of those subredits in order to see what's going on there, and they can. It's not it's not like wiped off the face of the earth or anything, or or locked down. You can go to them. You will be presented with a message that warns you about it before you do so, so like Twitter, Reddit has an outright banned Russian outlets or users from participation, but has instead limited the reach of that activity in an effort to mitigate disinformation and propaganda campaigns. In addition, like I said, if you do go to the r Russia subredit, you'll first see a message saying that the subredit contains a quote high volume of information not supported by credible sources end quote. So again, not outright saying that the stuff in that subredit is just a bunch of lies, or even that a lot of it might contain misinformation. Instead, it's a warning the visitors need to use discretion and critical thinking, something that might be a little bit of a stretch for a lot of creditors. There's this longstanding meme that a ton of people on Reddit never bother to read any further than a headline, though I think that's mostly a gross exaggeration. At least in some subredits, some are better than others. So again, it's not that everything in these subredits is toxic or wrong or or a misinformation campaign, just that there's a much higher percentage of things that are purposefully posted there in order to spread misinformation, and that users need to be aware of that. According to Elon Musk, SpaceX has reached out to help Ukraine by delivering a shipment of satellite Internet dishes that can link to space X's Starlink network. Starlink is a satellite system that uses small satellites in lowerth orbit to deliver Internet access to remote locations. It's currently in a a beta program with just a couple of thousand satellites in orbit. There is supposed to be tens of thousands in orbit to provide full coverage, so Starlink customers use a tripod mounted dish that can actually track the progress of satellites as they pass overhead, and they can switch to new satellites as the older satellite moves out of range. Um hackers reportedly launched a cyber attack against a different satellite internet provider, via sat, which is another American company but operates in Europe as well. So this could create expanded access to the Internet in Ukraine, though it is unclear how many kits SpaceX actually sent, or how those kits are going to be distributed, and how extensive the coverage of Starlink's coverage over Ukraine actually is. And I realized I was being redundant with coverage there. On a semi related note, the hacker responsible for setting up a Twitter account specifically to track Elon Musk's movements his movements via private jet, which is something that the CEO and billionaire has denounced as a gross invasion of privacy. Well he this hacker has now done the same thing for a group of Russian oligarchs. The account, fittingly titled Russian oligarch Jets, tracks the aircraft that's owned by Russia's wealthiest business folks. The Twitter feed updates automatically, so it's it's essentially tapping into air traffic information that regards specific takeoffs and landings. It looks for identifiers of aircraft belonging to these oligarchs and then posts that update whenever new information pops up around the world. So the Twitter feed shows that while the EU and the US are imposing sanctions on Russia meant to really clamped down on the activities of these these billionaires, who are often buddy buddy with Putin, uh, the Russian elite seemed to be globe trotting as if nothing was different from any other week. They don't seem terribly hindered by what's happened so far. Jack Sweeney, the person who made the account, has warned folks that while the tracking data tends to be pretty accurate outside of Russia, within Russia, it's a different story because air tracking data is not as readily available there. And on the space front, Russia has suspended its involvement in some joint space missions with the European Space Agency and also has booted the United States from a joint mission to send a probe to the planet Venus. The rose caused most Space Agency issued a statement saying it would be inappropriate to continue cooperation after the EU and the US imposed sanctions on Russia. The country's withdrawal from the spaceport at the Guyana Space Center could be a long term obstacle for the e s A, which partly depends on Russian spacecraft to launch missions. Without Russia's involvement, those future missions are in a kind of limbo. The Russian Space Agency has also indicated potential issues with the International Space Station. A good portion of the I s S is made up of Russian modules. In fact, a Russian module was the first module up in orbit, and the thrusters on some of those Russian modules are part of what helped the I S S maintain its altitude above the Earth to to maintain the correct orbit. While there have been no official movements to separate the Russian section with the rest of the I S S or to withdraw cosmonauts and leave everyone else just floating up there without a way to use the Russian thrusters, which are controlled from the ground in Russia, the agency has at least implied that such outcomes are not entirely out of the question, and now we can transition away from Russia and the Ukraine. Satish Kumbine, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange bit connect, has been indicted on charges that he used bit connect to run a Ponzi scheme that amounted to more than two billion dollars. Now, as a quick reminder, a ponzi scheme is a type of pyramid scheme. So the head of the scheme gets investors to pour money into it, and then the head of the scheme lives high on the hawk uses that investor money to, you know, go buy eluxury yacht or something. But you know that that investment money, that initial round is not going to stretch forever and Eventually, the people who invested money are going to expect a return on their investment, and if you're bilking wealthy people, they might also have the means to make your life really difficult. So to satisfy that initial round of investors, you go out and you get a second round of investors. So the second round of investors pours money into your scheme, and you use some of that influx of cash to pay out returns to your first round of investor. Stairs the first round says, oh wow, I'm making money off my investment. Look at this this dividend I got. This is really paying off. And some of them might even go and reinvest in the scheme, putting even more of their money into it, thinking they're gonna get even larger payouts further down the road. Meanwhile, the head of the scheme continues to live the lush life for as long as this can last, and you might think, hey, Jonathan, that doesn't sound sustainable. Surely, at some point you reach a stage where there's no way to attract a new round of investments to pay out all the previous investors, and the whole thing will come crashing down. And you're right, it can take a long time, but these things are inherently unstable and unsustainable. Anyway, the Justice Department says that Kombani and his associates effectively ran a ponzi scheme with bit connect as the platform, and we've seen this crop up in a few crypto companies. As I've said before, one of the big problems with crypto is that most people don't really understand how it works, so they just see crypto as being this kind of license to print money. At least back when crypto was performing well, so people would very easily get swept up into cons because crypto just seemed to be like a magic word that could make your money turn into lots more money. And this was okay back when you know crypto was doing well. Obviously, things have changed because we've seen some dramatic fluctuations in crypto values recently, like some crypto has crashed super hard, recovered, a bit crashed again. That makes investors a little less enthusiastic about jumping on board. So that has mitigated this a little bit, but we've still seen a lot of of scam artists try and cash in on the crypto craze. Anyway, Kambani will now go to trial. So he's been indicted, but that was just an indictment, so now he'll have to go to trial. If he's found guilty on the charges against him, which include charges like wire fraud and money laundering, he could face up to seventy years in prison. We have a few more stories to go through before we conclude today, but first let's take another quick break. A Japanese supplier called Kojima Industries Corporation, which plays a pivotal role in supplying automaker Toyota with critical components, has been hit by a cyber attack. That attack created a domino effect which led to Toyota stopping all vehicle production in all of its Japanese manufacturing facilities. So this is because Toyota uses a just in time approach, which means Toyota only brings in components in order to install them into vehicles at that time, and that way, Toyota doesn't have to maintain warehouse facilities to just hold an inventory of parts. They just bring in parts when they need them. But because Cogima Industries operations were affected, that strategy then had a massive impact on Toyota itself because it doesn't have that large inventory of parts that it can rely on while Cogima Industries recovers from the cyber attack. Now, as of this recording, I do not have information about who was responsible for that cyber attack, nor do I know about the nature of the attack itself. I would not be shocked to learn it was a ransomware attack, but that's pure speculation on my part. It could be something totally different. Amazon continues to battle employee attempts to unionize. Now, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, or r w D s U, has filed an official list of misconduct charges against them Amazon with the United States National Labor Relations Board otherwise known as the n l RB. So, the r w D s U is alleging that Amazon has continued and even stepped up anti union measures in an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Now, you might remember that employees at that warehouse previously attempted to hold a vote to unionize, but that vote failed to secure enough support from employees to move forward. Subsequently, however, the n l RB found that Amazon had illegally instituted policies to discourage employees from voting on the matter and interfered in the voting process. So these new charges. You know, that was last year, but this year, these new charges are accusing Amazon of essentially doing the same thing. Now that n l RB has actually ordered a redo of the union vote. They said the first vote is not legitimate. It does not necessarily show that employees didn't support a union because Amazon interfered, So we're gonna rehold that vote. And now the r w DSU was saying Amazon's back to trying to leverage its its power against employees. Amazon reps have said that they are finite the company has done nothing illegal, which doesn't exactly give you a full warm, fuzzy feeling, right like, hey, nothing we've done is illegal. That's that's that's not really uh a good response, I think. But according to Amazon union supporters, company reps have been removing pro union flyers and information that union supporters have put up next to anti union flyers. The pro union folks are doing this on their time off, which is allowed by law. You are on your own time allowed to put up pro union stuff, but apparently Amazon reps have been taking that down while leaving up the anti union stuff. The the n w DS you also accuses Amazon of holding mandatory anti union meetings to discourage workers from supporting the efforts, just as they said the company had done last year. Also later this month, in New York, Amazon employees at a totally different warehouse are going to hold a vote on whether or not to unionize. That happens the week of March. Now, I'm pretty sure that Amazon is trying to squash these individual efforts out of concern that we could see other warehouses in other states and cities follow suit. I think what Amazon is trying to do is prevent this from turning into a massive labor movement. But there's been a lot of momentum on that front. Recently. State House representatives in West Virginia are considering a bill that would outlaw over the air updates from car manufacturers directly to vehicles. And if that part of the bill, because that's just part of it. The bill covers a lot of other stuff, But if that part has passed into law, it would mean that people in West Virginia would be required to bring their vehicle to a dealership in order to get software updates. Now, as we've seen over the years, manufacturers have built more more computer systems into vehicles, and there's been a rising need to be able to update those computer systems with patches and such. Right now, car manufacturers can issue such updates themselves, and cars will receive them directly from the manufacturer over the air, kind of similar to how your smartphone will regularly receive updates to its operating system. But House Bill HBT sixty would make it illegal for car manufacturers to do that in West Virginia. Now, the bill does allow for software updates to entertainment and navigation systems, primarily so that folks wouldn't be stuck with outdated maps as they drive around, but otherwise, for any other type of software update, they would have to go into a dealership in order to get it, likely with a pretty hefty charge, when otherwise they would just get those updates for free over the air. Meanwhile, dealerships are marking up car prices to insane levels, largely due to chip shortages that have impacted some apply while demand remains high, and car manufacturers are not allowed to market directly to consumers, generally speaking, because of laws that were meant to protect small businesses. The idea was, you know, the individual dealership like the mom and pop car dealership would not be able to compete against, say GM, if GM we're selling cars directly to consumers. So these laws were put into place to protect those smaller businesses. But the problem is those small businesses are now effectively monopolies, at least in regional areas UH themselves. So I guess you could say I am against this particular section of this bill, especially since it could lead to dangerous situations. I mean, if an update is meant to address a safety issue, and if that means that people will have to take time out of their lives to go to a dealership in order to get a software patch to address something that is largely invisible. Right, software patches typically you know, you don't really you're not really cognizant of them. You're not aware of changes unless it's something massive. So for a lot of people, they probably just say, like, I can't deal with that, I'll do that later, I'll put that off. I suspect actually a ton of people would just failed to go and get their systems upgraded, and then you could have some really bad safety problems follow suit, like accidents and deaths and stuff. Now the bill will still have to pass state Senate before it can become a law, and to also have to be signed into law by the governor. So there's still a chance that the language could be changed, that this whole section of this law could be removed before it goes forward, and that's what I'm hoping for. Finally, some sad news, David Boggs, who was a researcher at Xerox Park, has passed away. Bog's co invented the Ethernet PC connection. You know, that's the connection that allows one computer to communicate with another over Ethernet cable or you know how a computer connect to a network of other computers and computer devices. The either net connection was one of many necessary components that allowed us to have computer networks in general and the Internet in particular. Uh. The other co inventor of Ethernet was Bob Metcalfe. He coined Metcalf's law. Metcalf's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. So as you add people to a communications network, the value of that network increases dramatically, which makes sense, right because you have more potential connections. Every time you add a person, that new person can connect to everyone who was already part of that that network. Thus the value of the network in general increases dramatically. Anyway, Boggs was an engineering genius. He was the guy who was the hardware guy, and that that group Metcalf was kind of a conceptual idea kind of part of the partnership, and Boggs was sort of the the engineer making those ideas become reality, kind of of part a very necessary part to make this happen. And his work made it possible for computers to send information back and forth to each other on local networks. The original Ethernet cable was able to send data at just two point nine four megabits per second. These days, according to c net anyway, the average Ethernet connection is closer to eight megabits per second. So it's not like it's screaming fast. Uh, they're even gigabit Ethernet networks, but the speeds that you find on the network tend to be a fraction of a gigabit per second. This is largely due not to downfalls or or or our flaws in the Ethernet cables or the connections, but rather just the nature of network traffic and how that can impact things, or how far you are from the source of the data the distance actually take matters as well anyway. Ether that was one part of the very large jigsaw puzzle that made computer networking possible, and our world would not be what it is now without that capability. David Boggs was seventy one years old, and um, you know, tech Stuff salutes your work, Boggs. Pretty amazing stuff. All right, that's it for the news for Tuesday, March first, twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me and let me know. The best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle for our show is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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