Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 06/25 – Some Western Digital NAS Devices Are Getting Ill (matic?)

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

Fri. 06/25 – Some Western Digital NAS Devices Are Getting Ill (matic?) Some Western Digital NAS devices are getting ill (matic). A breakdown of the 5 or 6 big tech antitrust bills that just passed House committees. Windows 11 is free, but what if your device can’t run it? Also, more on Microsoft’s anti-Apple posturing. And, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: AirMedCareNetwork.com/tech offer code TECH Cybereason.com Links: WD My Book NAS devices are being remotely wiped clean worldwide (Bleeping Computer) Big Tech edges closer to break up after deeply unhinged markup (The Verge) Satya Nadella’s closing Windows 11 remarks were a direct shot across Apple’s bow (The Verge) Windows 11 is free, but your CPU might not be officially supported (The Verge) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: What Is Blue Box? A Vast Conspiracy Grips the Video Game World (Bloomberg) A very brief history of every Google messaging app (The Verge) The Boy Who Could DeFi: Meet the 13-Year-Old Who Built a $7M Money Manager on Ethereum (Decrypt) How Roku used the Netflix playbook to beat bigger players and rule streaming video (CNBC) Can a $110 Million Helmet Unlock the Secrets of the Mind? (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Friday, June 25th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Some Western Digital Network attached storage devices are getting ill. Maddoch. A breakdown of the big five or six tech antitrust bills that just passed House committees.

Windows 11 is free, but what if your device can't run it? Also more on Microsoft's anti-Apple posturing and, of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Western Digital says some MyBook Live devices are being compromised by malware, which leads to a factory reset erasing all data, which, you know, is not a good thing for a NAS device, but Western Digital says it hasn't been hacked, quoting bleeping computer. WD MyBook is a network attached storage device that looks like a small vertical book that you can stand on your desk. The WD MyBook Live app allows owners to access their files and manage their devices remotely, even if the NAS is behind a firewall or router. Today, WD. MyBook owners worldwide suddenly found that all of their files were mysteriously deleted and they could no longer log into the device via a browser or an app. When they attempted to log in via the web dashboard, the device stated that they had an invalid password.

I have a WD MyBook Live connected to my home land and worked fine for years. I have just found that somehow all the data on it is gone today, while the directories seem there but empty. Previously, the 2 terabyte volume was almost full, but now it shows full capacity, a WD MyBook owner reported on the Western Digital Community forums. After further, owners confirmed that their devices suffered the same issue. Owners reported that the MyBook logs showed that the devices received a remote command to perform a factory reset, starting at around 3 p.m. yesterday and through the night.

Unlike QNAP devices, which are commonly connected to the internet and exposed to attacks such as the Q Locker Ransomware, the Western Digital MyBook devices are stored behind a firewall and communicate through the MyBook Live cloud servers to provide remote access. Some users have expressed concerns that Western Digital servers were hacked to allow a threat actor to push out a remote factory reset command to all devices connected to the service. If a threat actor wiped devices, it is strange, as no one has reported ransom notes or other threats, meaning the attack was simply meant to be destructive. If you own a WD MyBook Look Nas device, Western Digital strongly recommends that you disconnect the device from the internet. At this time, we recommend you disconnect your MyBook Live and MyBook Live duo from the internet to protect your data on the device, Western Digital said in an advisory.

Western Digital told Weeping Computer that they are actively investigating the attacks, but do not believe it was a compromise of their servers. Western Digital has determined that some MyBook Live devices are being compromised by malicious software. In some cases, this compromise has led to a factory reset that appears to erase all data on the device. We understand that our customer's data is very important. At this time, we recommend you disconnect your my book live from the internet to protect your data on the device. We are actively investigating, and we will provide updates to this thread when they are available, end quote. Western Digital further told bleeping computer that they believe the devices were

compromised using an unpatched vulnerability after they were connected directly to the internet, end quote. Something we didn't talk about this week is that various House committees approved five major antitrust bills on Wednesday, and also the ending Platform Monoplies Act on Thursday. All bills now head to the House floor, so the rubber might be hitting the road here. What would these bills do if they ever got to the president's desk for signing? Quoting the Verge. Lawmakers started off with some of the less controversial measures. At the top, they approved a bill that would update filing fees for mergers for the first time in nearly two decades. The bill, called the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, would give the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission more money to take on antitrust cases against tech giants.

Another bill called the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act was also approved favorably and heads to the House floor for a final vote. If it passes, the bill would make sure state attorneys general who file federal antitrust cases against a company like Facebook would be able to have that case heard. in the court they select. Things got a lot testier once the committee reached the third bill, the Access Act, especially among Democrats representing California, the home of Silicon Valley. The bill outlines new standards for data portability and interoperability. Democrats like Representative Eric Sawwell and Republicans like Jim Jordan of Ohio argued that the bill could make it easier for American companies to transfer user data to Chinese ones. The bill was later approved, but Democrats like Representative Ted Liu promised that their decision to push the bill

through committee didn't mean that they will vote for it later on the floor. Early Thursday morning, lawmakers moved on to the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act. The measure would bar large tech platforms from buying up nascent competitors. Think Facebook buying Instagram in 2012. After hours of debate, it was approved, but with three California Democrats voting against the measure. Before ending at 5 a.m. Thursday, lawmakers also approved the American Choice and Innovation, Act, a non-discrimination measure that bars companies like Google from giving preferences to their

own products on their own services. Finally, the ending Platform Monopoly Act made its way out of committee, and that would force large companies like Amazon to sell off different lines of business that conflict with one another. The bill eliminates the ability of large platforms to use the control they have in different lines of business to hurt competitors, end quote. As mentioned, the next step is the House floor. Five of the six. bills still need to be introduced to the Senate after that, where they would need 60 votes to pass the filibuster. The filing fee measure is the only one that has already cleared that hurdle and is in conference to reconcile language before heading to Biden's desk. But that was obviously

the most meager of the lot. One thing I didn't mention yesterday about Windows 11, it is a free upgrade for everybody, but there is a bit of fine print to that. Your existing hardware might not be able to support it, quoting the verge. Microsoft has altered its minimum hardware requirements, and it's the CPU changes that are the most surprising here. Windows 11 will only officially support 8th-gen and newer Intel Core processors alongside Apollo Lake and newer Pentium and Celeron processors. That potentially rules out millions of existing Windows 10 devices from upgrading to Windows 11 with full support, and even devices like Microsoft's own Surface Studio 2, which the company is still selling right now for $3,499. Older devices that aren't officially supported

will be met with a warning during the Windows 11 install that the upgrade is not recommended, but the OS should still install. Windows 11 will also only officially support AMD Risen 2,000 and newer processors and second-gen or newer epic chips, end quote. So I guess head over to Microsoft's PC health app to make sure your existing machine can run Windows 11. Also, I mentioned yesterday that Satcha Nadella closed the Windows event, making some subtle digs at You Know Who. I wanted to go into that just a little bit. In his closing Windows event remarks, Nadella issued a subtle but stinging critique of Apple, positioning Microsoft as Apple's main competition for the hearts of developers. If this is the posture going forward, I guess, dust off your Apple versus Microsoft

popcorn. Quoting the verge again, Nadella's speech was almost entirely about building a case that Windows would be a better platform for creators than either MacOS or especially iOS. He argued that, quote, there is no personal computing without personal agency, end quote, insisting that users should be more in control of their computers. It's fair to call this critique opportunistic. After all, Microsoft itself tried to build an App Store ecosystem for Windows that utterly failed to match the level of success we've seen for the iPhone or Android for that matter. It's a truism that, in tech, the underdog always calls for openness until they're the top dog,

and Microsoft's App Store is definitely the underdog. But just because a critique is opportunistic doesn't mean it's not correct. Nadella is playing a very long game with Windows 11. Just as Google and Apple build their companies around their business model, so does Microsoft. But Microsoft's business model has nothing to do with selling Windows or even getting a cut of app sales anymore. It's about Microsoft 365, Azure, and Enterprise Services. When Nadella says Windows is a, quote, platform for platform creators, end quote, Microsoft's other services are some of those other platforms. That happened to work well on Windows. For the time being, Nadella's argument is that Windows 11 is big enough and broad enough to make room for others too, and that other platforms are not, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions.

Can I turn you on to a vast conspiracy theory? That is exciting certain corners of the video game world, quoting Bloomberg. Tens of thousands of people are coordinating online in search of clancy. surrounding what's either a series of curious coincidences or a conspiracy led by one of the world's most celebrated video game directors. It starts with a PlayStation 5 game called Abandoned. In April, Sony Group unveiled the project from a small Dutch company Blue Box Game Studios with scant details. From there, an elaborate theory emerged that the game does not exist and that it's actually a secret new project from the beloved and eccentric Japanese gamemaker Hideo Kojima,

creator of the Metal Gear series. Followers set up a community on Reddit to examine the mystery. It now has more than 5,000 members. The hype was fed, in part, by Kojima's mythic record of stunts and gamesmanship. In the past, the video game legend has generated fake companies and hired actors. To some, the various comments and actions of Hussan Karaman, the head of Blue Box, have contained strange discrepancies and seem to fit within Kojima's patterns, end quote. Next, nothing really to quote from this piece because it's,

It's really just a timeline, but you know, I couldn't resist a timeline of every single Google messaging app going all the way back to 2004. It's from the verge. Remember Google Talk, Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google Plus, hangouts. Remember Allo? Yeah, it's insane to see it all written up in order like that. And I can't resist stories about kids coding themselves into businesses, young kid coding geniuses from DeCrypt. Gajesh Nake is, the developer behind a D-Fi protocol that's managed nearly $7 million in cryptocurrency, and he's also just 13. Quote, I had the basic math skills, like addition subtraction, said Nake over the phone from his family's home in Goa, India. That's all which was required. Then afterwards, I started learning

all the programming languages, end quote. Next, I've said several times that Roku is quietly one of the dark horses in the streaming wars. Actually, can we combine analogies here of a dark horse and an 800-pound dark gorilla, maybe, who's quietly, as we saw this week with that Comcast speculation, controlling key strategic junctures of the streaming landscape. Roku actually has a funny history. Did you know it was actually spun out of Netflix, which is fitting because Roku is finding success by running a slightly altered Netflix playbook? Because they like original content, just like Netflix does, but they also like ad-supported. content, which Netflix definitely does not. Quoting CNBC. Wood credits some of Roku's success to

Clayton Christensen's famous business concept of the innovator's dilemma, where incumbent companies couldn't focus on streaming because they were too busy protecting their older linear cable TV models. Christensen's book just happens to be one of Reed Hastings' favorites, too. Wood also noted that Roku's relatively unchanging user interface and simple remote control have appealed to customers because users want simplicity. Many companies just don't really understand the attitude people have when they're watching TV, said Wood. People want to sit there, drink their beer, and watch TV, end quote. As Wood envisioned, Roku now makes the majority of its money from services, much of which comes from taking a share of every media company's total streaming advertising time

and selling it. When Roku agreed to distribute Peacock, NBC Universal's streaming service, it took about 10% of what would have been Peacock's ad inventory to sell for itself. According to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity, using its viewership data, Roku is developing its own advertising technology to better target commercials than what's possible on linear television. In March, Roku acquired Nielsen's advanced video advertising business to begin dynamically inserting linear TV advertising, which increases the number of ads that can be shown on a given show or movie and can be used to better target ads to users, end quote. And finally, from Bloomberg Business Week, Brian Johnson made a fortune in online payment processing,

and then he spent a lot of that building hardware meant to radically expand science's understanding of the brain's aging and effects on the body. Sounds a bit Elon Musky, don't you think? You make a tidy score flipping your company, and then you take all of that and turn it into a moonshot startup. Quote, over the next few weeks, a company called Colonel will begin sending dozens of customers across the U.S. a $50,000 helmet that can, crudely speaking, read their mind, weighing a couple of pounds each, the helmets contain nests of sensors and other electronics that measure and analyze a brain's electrical impulses and blood flow at the speed of thought, providing a window into how the organ responds to the world.

The basic technology has been around for years, but it's usually found in room-sized machines that can cost millions of dollars and require patients to sit still in a clinical setting. The promise of a league's more affordable technology that anyone can wear and walk around with is, well, mind-bending. Excited researchers anticipate using the helmets to gain insights into brain aging, mental disorders, concussions, strokes, and the mechanics behind previously metaphysical experiences such as meditation and psychedelic trips. To make progress on all the fronts that we need to as a society, we have to bring the brain online, says Brian Johnson, who spent more than five years, and raised about $110 million, half of it his own money, to develop the helmets.

Johnson is the chief executive officer of Colonel, a startup that's trying to build and sell thousands or even millions of lightweight, relatively inexpensive helmets that have the umph and precision needed for what neuroscientists, computer scientists, and electrical engineers have been trying to do for years, peer through the human skull outside of university or government labs. In what must be some kind of record for rejection, 228 investors passed on Johnson's sales pitch, and the CEO who made a fortune from his previous company in the payments industry almost zeroed out his bank account last year to keep Colonel running. We were two weeks. We were two weeks away from missing payroll, he says. Although Colonel's tech still has much to prove,

successful demonstrations conducted shortly before COVID-19 spilled across the globe, convinced some of Johnson's doubters that he has a shot at fulfilling his ambitions, end quote. That's all for this week. I'm going to give everybody another sample of spacecasts this weekend, especially because that conversation with Sonal from Andresen Horowitz gets so much deeper into the whole VC firm starts a media property story that we didn't really cover properly on the main show. Listen to that first half hour at least. Anyway, have a good weekend. Please forgive one of the worst dad joke puns that I've ever attempted in the title of today's episode.

Talk to you on Monday.