Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 12/09 – FireEye Says It Got Hacked By A Nation State

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Wednesday, December 9th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Fire Eye says it got hacked by a nation state.

Starting point is 00:00:43 Microsoft's cloud gaming is coming to iOS in the spring. Samsung's unpacked event is coming in about a month, and we've already got plenty of leaks about the phones we expect to see. Is Apple's self-driving project still on track? And if you feel like you've been getting more spam calls this year, while maybe rents in San Francisco have been plummeting, I'm here to tell you neither of those. Those trends seem to be imaginary. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

Starting point is 00:01:10 If you're a regular listener of this podcast, then you should know the name Fire Eye. They're the cybersecurity firm that it seems like I quote from half the time when there's a major hack or security story in the world. Well, Fire Eye is the security story today because they say some of their internal systems were hacked by nation state actors, compromising its red team tools, which Fire Eye uses to test the defenses of thousands of customers, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Fire, I declined to comment on who it believed was behind the breach of its hacking tools, which experts said could potentially be leveraged in future attacks against its customer base, including a diverse array of U.S. and Western

Starting point is 00:01:50 national security agencies and businesses. A person familiar with the matter said Russia is currently seen by investigators, including U.S. intelligence agencies, as the most likely culprit, but stress that the investigation was continuing. Moscow's Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR, and one of two Russian groups that hacked the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2016 presidential election is believed to be responsible, the person said. The Russian embassy didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, quote, I have concluded we are witnessing an attack by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities. Kevin Mandia, the chief executive at Fire Eye and a former Air Force officer, said in a blog post

Starting point is 00:02:27 published Tuesday. The attackers tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack Fire Eye, end quote. Fire Eye, a company that has in years past, helped businesses respond to some of the most serious hacks on record, such as the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures by North Korea, said it was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and industry partners, including Microsoft, in a continuing investigation into the incident. Fire Eye shares dropped about 7% in after-hours trading, end quote. Microsoft says it's cloud gaming service, part of Xbox GamePass Ultimate, will come to I. via web browser in the spring of 2021, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. This was first rumored in October.

Starting point is 00:03:15 Microsoft had decided not to launch its game streaming service on iOS because of the App Store guidelines. Bringing cloud gaming to the iPhone and iPad via the web browser will allow Microsoft to skirt the App Store guidelines altogether, quoting from Microsoft's blog post. Expanding Xbox to new players is central to our ambition of helping games and developers find an easy path to the world's 3 billion gamers. We are doing this by embracing multiple devices and providing a consistent Xbox experience wherever you log in, whether that's on your Xbox Series X or S, PC, Xbox 1, Android device, or starting in spring 2021, your Windows PC and iOS device from the cloud, end quote.

Starting point is 00:03:57 Microsoft does note that cloud gaming on iOS via the web will technically be a beta at first, but no further details are provided. Note that this is also different than what's available in the Xbox app, which allows Xbox console owners to stream games directly from their personal console, end quote. Google says it is opening up its open source fuchsia OS to outside developers, the first formal announcement of the project Google has ever made, quoting 9 to 5 Google. For almost as long as it's been in development, fuchsia has been open source, meaning anyone can view and download the necessary source code to build the OS for themselves. In fact,

Starting point is 00:04:40 last year, Google quietly launched an official fuchsia.dev website, teaching developers how best to work on fuchsia and, to a much lesser extent, how to make fuchsia apps. All throughout the last four years, however, Fuchsia has been something of a skunk works project with Google remaining surprisingly quiet about its purpose. That changes today as the company is making something of a splash with Fuchsia on the Google open source blog, opening a call for developers to contribute to the project. project. In fact, this is the first formal announcement of the FUSHA operating system's existence and how Google plans to use it, quoting from the blog post. FUSA is a long-term project to create a general purpose open-source operating system,

Starting point is 00:05:19 and today we are expanding Fuchsia's open source model to welcome contributions from the public. FUSHA is designed to prioritize security, updateability, and performance, and is currently under active development by the FUSA team. We have been developing FUSA in the open in our Git repository for the last four years. You can browse the repository history at fuchsia.com to see how fuchsia has evolved over time. We are laying the foundation from the kernel up to make it easier to create long-lasting, secure products and experiences, end quote. To support developers and make the fuchsia development process less skunk works and more public, Google is opening fuchsia's bug tracker to the public. Just like Android and chromium, fuchsia now even has public mailing lists for those who want to be

Starting point is 00:06:02 aware of major changes. If you want to contribute code, there's also a formal process to become a member of the Fuchsia project. More importantly, for both interested developers and the general public, Google now has a public roadmap for Fuchsia's development, end quote. Mark your calendars for the new year, because the rumors are that Samsung's annual unpacked event will take place on January 14th. Not only that, it seems that official marketing teasers for the Galaxy S-21, S-21 Plus, and S-21 Ultra, the exact devices we expect to debut at this event have all apparently leaked online, quoting Android police. Pictured below, we have the Samsung Galaxy S-21 5G in Phantom Violet. Up front, we get a peek at the flat display with centered hole-punch

Starting point is 00:06:52 cam and minimal front bezel. The frame of the phone extends up around the side of the camera bump for a very distinctive look that's fast becoming the S-21's calling card. That camera bump houses a triple camera setup with a 12 megapixel main sensor, 12 megapixel ultra-wide, and 64-mapixel telephoto. Samsung sets the flash off to the right of that package on the violet glass stick back. The exposed body portions of the phone will be bronze, contrasting the violet color. Samsung's Galaxy S-21 plus 5G looks pretty much exactly the same as the S-21 5G. The color, overall design, and camera setup matches what we'll see from the S-21. The differences here will manifest in boost to screen size and battery capacity.

Starting point is 00:07:35 The Galaxy S-21 Ultra is where the design changes start cropping up. The S-21 Ultra will get a curved screen instead of the flat-edged glass of its smaller siblings. Along with that, the Galaxy S-21 Ultra will have a quad-camera system instead of the triple camera on the S-21 and S-21 Plus. We can see a single periscope cam with 10-mepixel 10X super-telephoto Zoom, alongside the 108-mixel main sensor, 12 megapixel ultra-wide and 12 megapixel 3X telephoto cameras. There's also a laser autofocus system at the top replacing the TOF sensor of the S20 Ultra, end quote. On top of predicting that the unpacked event will happen January 14th, Android police's sources say that retail availability

Starting point is 00:08:21 of these new phones will be later that month, January 29. They also think that pricing will come in slightly cheaper than the previous generation, which is always welcome. All right, they're officially starting to go out the door. DoorDash began trading today after its IPO at a price of $102, thereby raising $3.37 billion for the company, valuing the company at $38 billion. But at the time of this writing, once trading began, its price has risen to $182 a share,

Starting point is 00:08:59 a greater than 75% rise over its IPO price, so a plenty healthy first day pop at about noon eastern DoorDash was trading around $155 to $160 per share, so suggesting a market cap of $60 billion plus. Quite good in terms of cresting the wave of investor sentiment. Airbnb is on deck for tomorrow. Wish should debut next week, then Affirm and Roblox later this month, but before the holidays, I would assume. Cooperino Cremlinology time with Uber cutting bait on its self-driving tech, whither Apple's foray into this area. Sources are telling Mark German that Bob Mansfield has officially retired from Apple for good this time,

Starting point is 00:09:50 which is interesting because, remember, he had been dissuaded from a previous retirement attempt, we think, to keep charge of Apple's self-driving project. Well, German says AI chief John Gianandrea is now in charge of private. Project Titan, the self-driving project at Apple, with Doug Field running day-to-day operations on the project reporting directly to G&Andrea, quoting German in Bloomberg. Previously, Field reported to Bob Mansfield, Apple's former Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering. Mansfield has now fully retired from Apple, leading to G&Mdrea taking over. Mansfield initially retired from Apple in 2012, only to return for less than a year as its

Starting point is 00:10:29 senior vice president in charge of chip technology. Mansfield stepped down from that role in 2013 and then remained. as a part-time consultant. In 2014, Apple set out to build an autonomous electric car to take on Tesla and other manufacturers, only to pare back its ambitions around 2016. The project was struggling with direction, leadership, and technical challenges. Bloomberg reported at the time, and Apple brought back Mansfield to lead the effort. Mansfield oversaw a shift from the development of a car to just the underlying autonomous system. In 2017, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook told Bloomberg that the autonomous system's effort was, quote, the mother of all AI projects and, quote,

Starting point is 00:11:06 a core technology that we view as very important. He also described it as, quote, probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on, end quote. Since then, Apple has cut some workers from the project, but continues its development. In the past, the company has weighed launching its own car, building the self-driving system for auto manufacturing partners, or designing an aftermarket kit that works with multiple different cars, the people said, end quote. also says that Apple continues to test their vehicles on California roads with a fleet of 66 test vehicles as of right now, according to the California DMV, up from a fleet of 55 a year ago. I believe I told you a couple times this year that it was shaping up to be a banner year for

Starting point is 00:11:53 European startups, at least in terms of attracting VC funding. And indeed, according to an Atomico report, European tech startups are on track to receive a record $41 billion in VC funding. funding in 2020, driven by FinTech and SaaS startups. Quote, the success of 2020 has been driven by the increase in 100 to $250 million megarounds. The top 10 largest rounds alone raised $4.1 billion, equivalent to 16% of capital invested in Europe in the first nine months of 2020. The companies which raised those megarounds came from all corners of the continent, Sweden's Klarna, and Northwolt, the UK's Revolut, Karma Kitchen, and, and, and, and, and, and,

Starting point is 00:12:35 and Kazoo, Germany's Auto One group, Lillium and Tier, France's Miracle, and Romania's UiPath. But in comparison to the U.S., European investment at $41 billion, remains low, five times less than North America's $141 billion for the year. Still, the continent continues to catch up with Asia, which at $74 billion invested in 2020, is some way behind the $117 billion for 2018, mostly due to the continued decline of investment into Chinese private tech companies, end quote. Speaking of, here's an interesting raise. Wiki Factory has raised $4.5 million for its so-called GitHub for hardware, which aims to allow you to make almost anything remotely, quoting TechCrunch.

Starting point is 00:13:26 With the investment, the company will build a quality-assured manufacturing marketplace, as well as mirrored servers in China to open up access to its hardware. capital, Chen Zhen. Wikifactory is available in four languages right now and is set to expand to 20 after it raised a Series A funding round last year. In addition, its new collaborative CAD tool with inbuilt chat means designers, engineers, manufacturers, and enterprises can collaborate remotely on virtually any CAD model from concept through to finish prototype. This allows product developers to review and discuss 3D models in over 30 file formats in real time. The idea is is to democratize access to normally expensive product lifecycle management or PLM software.

Starting point is 00:14:11 The startup says that since May 2019, some 70,000 product developers in 190 countries have been using WikiFactory to build robotics, electric vehicles and drones, agri-tech and sustainable energy appliances, lab equipment and 3D printers, smart furniture and biotech fashion materials, as well as medical supplies including vital PPE and ventilators when there were global supply shortages, If you felt like you got more spam calls than ever this year, True caller says you're not imagining it. According to them, 31.3 billion spam calls were received between January and October this year,

Starting point is 00:14:53 up 18% year over year. That's the global total, but also the average American gets 28.4 spam calls a month up from 18.2 year over year, quoting TechCrunch. With 49.9 spam calls per use. a month up from an already alarming 45.6 figure last year, Brazil remained the worst impacted nation by spam calls, the firm said in its yearly report on the subject. Quote, the COVID-19 pandemic has directly and indirectly affected not only global

Starting point is 00:15:23 economies and societies, but spammer behavior as well. As the virus spread exponentially worldwide, spam calls started to decrease around March, said Truecaller, which analyzed over 145 billion anonymous calls to reach its conclusions. Spam reached its lowest point in April, and strict curfews and lockdowns were implemented worldwide. The overall volume of calls also dipped during this period. However, from that point, reports of scammers taking advantage of the uncertainty around the pandemic emerged. In May, spam calls started to pick up again and have been increasing on average by 9.7% per month. October, with a record high in terms of span calls, was 22.4% higher than the pre-lockdown period. In addition to bringing annoyance, these calls are also

Starting point is 00:16:06 being used to scam people out of money. As many as 56 million Americans reported having lost money to phone scams this year and an estimated $19.7 billion was lost to such calls, according to an earlier true caller report, end quote. Finally today, if you're also feeling like rents in San Francisco have been dropping because people either can now work from home and are thus moving to work from wherever they want, and or folks are actually fleeing the Bay Area because Silicon Valley is over. You're not imagining that either. In San Francisco, quoting Bloomberg, the median rent for a studio apartment dropped 35% last month from a year earlier to $2,100, while costs for one bedrooms were down 27% to 2716, according to data set to be released this week from Realtor.com. The declines are

Starting point is 00:17:03 steepening from earlier in the pandemic, a sign that people with the flexibility to move are leaving an area that is still among America's pricest for housing. San Francisco stands to be among the U.S. cities most affected by the trends brought on by COVID-19, even as much of the industry that drives its wealth thrives. While many New York finance firms are pushing for people to return to the office, tech companies are more fully embracing remote work, raising the prospect of a longer-term transformation of an area known

Starting point is 00:17:31 as much for its expensive real estate and devastating inequality as for its beauty and offbeat character. Some companies are taking steps to scale back office space. A sign the virus upheaval won't be temporary. San Francisco's office vacancy rate has roughly doubled this year to 8.3% driving asking rents down almost 9% according to real estate firm CBRE. Earlier this year, Pinterest shelled out almost $90 million to terminate its lease in a new downtown tower because it is, quote, rethinking where future employees could be based in a post-COVID era. Housing startup open door paid $5.2 million to end its downtown lease early, a regulatory filing showed, end quote. So if you're already a tech industry worker

Starting point is 00:18:15 in good standing and you're in San Francisco right now, you might be taking that as a trend signal that says that the boom times in San Francisco are over. But if you're a young, hungry, aspiring denizen of Silicon Valley, you might conversely take this news as a signal that your dreams of coming out to California to make your mark in the valley just got significantly more affordable. So the rumors all day have been that around the time this reaches your ears, about 2.30 p.m. Eastern Time, the FTC and 40-plus state attorneys general are going to file antitrust lawsuits against Facebook, alleging the Instagram and WhatsApp purchases were made to kill competition. I considered holding the show until those announcements were made, but then again,

Starting point is 00:19:07 most of the analysis of any lawsuits that get filed would happen overnight anyway. So, so I decided to just wait until tomorrow so we could dive into all of that. But this is me at least letting you know that this news has happened. Or probably has happened. At the time of this writing, it hasn't happened yet. But by the time you hear these words, it probably has. Again, producing this show is like living in a literal time machine. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 12/09 – FireEye Says It Got Hacked By A Nation State

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