The Next Billionaire Is Whatsapp

This week in InfoSec (09:53)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

10th February 199

Deep Blue Defeats Kasparov

In the first game of a six game match, IBM's Deep Blue chess computer defeated world champion Garry Kasparov. No computer had ever won a game against a world champion in chess. Kasparov would eventually win the series 4-2, but would lose to Deep Blue in a re-match a year later.

7th February 2000

Dennis Michael Moran (aka Coolio) performed a smurf attack against Yahoo's routers, causing its websites to be inaccessible for hours. Conversations on an IRC channel led to him being identified and convicted for a series of DDoS and website defacement crimes.

Rant of the Week (16:34)

Want to delete your Twitter DMs? Good luck with that

People make requests to delete their private messages, but Twitter ignores them.

Twitter’s direct messages have always been a security liability. The DMs you send to friends and Internet strangers aren’t end-to-end encrypted, making your conversations potentially accessible if Twitter suffers a data breach, or to company staffers with the right permissions to access them. 

Both scenarios are arguably more likely in Elon Musk’s version of Twitter, where key security and data protection staff have departed.

Since Musk acquired Twitter and started laying off thousands of employees at the start of November, remodelling the firm in his vision, multiple waves of tweeters have abandoned the platform. When they do, they often try to download their Twitter archive and delete DMs. In the chaos, the process has often been glitchy.

However, in Europe, people have turned to the continent’s GDPR data laws, which give people rights over how their information is collected, stored, and used. This includes the right to have data deleted. However, Twitter’s response to these requests, which have been seen by Wired, appears to show the platform ignoring detailed asks to delete DMs and just point people to generic guidance that doesn’t explain whether Twitter deletes your DMs from its servers. And now Europe’s data regulators are getting involved.

ADDITIONAL RANT:

Twitter redefines what makes a tweet with supersized 4,000-character limit

Following up after launching Twitter Blue in three more countries this morning, the platform has made a big change to tweets this afternoon. The new max for Twitter Blue subscribers in the US has been supersized all the way up to 4,000 characters.

Twitter announced the launch of the new character max through both its main account and 

Twitter Blue profile. The latter shared this:

“need more than 280 characters to express yourself?

we know that lots of you do… and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. we get that.

so we’re introducing longer Tweets! you’re gonna want to check this out. tap this ”

Who can write 4,000-character tweets?

While access to writing 4,000 character tweets is limited to Twitter Blue subscribers in the US at launch, anyone can read them.

Fortunately, the 280-character limit will still apply when viewing tweets in your timeline, you’ll have to tap a show more link on ones that make use of the new long-form option to read the whole tweet.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (27:32)

In Paris demo, Google scrambles to counter ChatGPT but ends up embarrassing itself

On Wednesday, Google held a highly anticipated press conference from Paris that did not deliver the decisive move against ChatGPT and the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership that many pundits expected. Instead, Google ran through a collection of previously announced technologies in a low-key presentation that included losing a demonstration phone.

The demo, which included references to many products that are still unavailable, occurred just hours after someone noticed that Google's advertisement for its newly announced Bard large language model contained an error about the James Webb Space Telescope. After Reuters reported the error, Forbes noticed that Google's stock price declined nearly 7 percent, taking about $100 billion in value with it.

Alphabet shares dive after Google AI chatbot Bard flubs answer in ad

LONDON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new chatbot shared inaccurate information in a promotional video and a company event failed to dazzle, feeding worries that the Google parent is losing ground to rival Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O).

Alphabet shares slid as much as 9% during regular trading with volumes nearly three times the 50-day moving average. They pared losses after hours and were roughly flat. The stock had lost 40% of its value last year but rallied 15% since the beginning of this year, excluding Wednesday's losses.

Industry News (34:20)

Stalkerware Developer Hit with $400K Fine

Drugs Labs Busted After Encrypted Chat App Takedown

UK Metal Engineering Firm Vesuvius Hit by Cyber-Attack

Cyber Insurance, A Must-Have for Small Businesses

Regulator Halts AI Chatbot Over GDPR Concerns

UK Politician's Email Hacked by Suspected Russian Threat Actors

New Info-Stealer Discovered as Russia Prepares Fresh Offensive

Trio Arrested in COVID PPE Fraud Probe

US and UK Sanction Seven Russian Cyber-Criminals

Tweet of the Week (41:08)

https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1623867611674202112

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