MIT Technology Review
Iran tensions 6h
The US has launched a cyber attack against Iran’s weapons systems
White House
The attack was in response to the downing of an unmanned US surveillance drone last Thursday. It was carried out on the same day President Trump decided at the last minute against bombing three sites in Iran.
The news: The attack on Iran was conducted by US Cyber Command, targeting computer systems used to control rocket and missile launches, according to the Washington Post. There were no deaths and it was deemed “very” effective, officials told the Wall Street Journal. US officials declined to comment on the attack. In an interview yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence told CBS: “We never comment on covert operations.”
Long time coming: The attack had been in the works for weeks, if not months, but it’s likely that escalating tensions in the region accelerated its launch. President Trump said today that Iran will face “major” new sanctions.
Blurring boundaries: There is much we still don’t know about the attack: how it was carried out, exactly what the target was, how it worked technically, and so on. However, it’s a clear example of the way the lines between physical and digital warfare are blurring. Last month Israel launched a missile attack on Hamas operatives it said were engaged in cyber warfare, for example.
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Charlotte Jee
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Charlotte Jee
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The US vs the rest of the world
The US has launched a cyber attack against Iran’s weapons systems
Supercomputing has just become the latest front in the US-China trade war
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Supercomputing has just become the latest front in the US-China trade war
America is limiting big Chinese computing firms’ access to US tech for the super-powerful machines....
The news: According to the Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Commerce has imposed new restrictions on tech exports that will prevent five big Chinese makers of supercomputers from using US components. The restrictions will impact sales to the firms by US chipmakers such as Intel, AMD, and Nvidia.
The targets: The companies affected include Sugon of Beijing and three of its affiliates, as well as the Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology. The Commerce Department says Sugon has acknowledged that the Chinese military is among its customers. Wuxi Jiangnan is owned by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Why hit supercomputers? Because the gargantuan machines aren’t just used for things like climate modeling and materials research. They also help develop nuclear weapons and other military gear, and they are increasingly powering leading-edge AI research, too.
Exascale rivalry: America still boasts the most powerful supercomputer in the world, called Summit, but both it and China are racing to develop the first "exascale" machine that will be five times faster. Every person on Earth would have to do a calculation every second of every day for just over four years to do what an exascale computer will do in the blink of an eye. The US’s move to restrict hardware exports could give it an edge in this contest, but it’s also likely to accelerate China’s efforts to develop homegrown chip suppliers.
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The online advertising industry breaks the law, says the UK’s data watchdog
An inquiry found that the global $200 billion ad tech sector is rife with illegal practices....
The what sector? Virtually all of us have firsthand experience of the ad tech industry. Ever searched for an item to buy online, only to have it follow you around the internet for days on end after? That’s a direct result of real-time bidding, which was the focus of this report. The practice is common within online advertising across Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the many thousands of data brokerage firms.
What is real-time bidding? It’s a marketplace for your data, essentially. As the website you visit loads, the website owner auctions a space on the page you’re looking at. An advertiser then buys that space, because it wants to reach people like you. The process can involve lots of companies, and it happens in a split second. Real-time bidding underpins the entire online advertising industry, and that’s why this report is so significant.
The findings: The Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data regulator, has concluded that these highly invasive data-driven online ads break both UK and European Union law.
How? Simply put, users are not being given a genuine opportunity to say whether they consent to their data being collected. For consent to be legal, people need to understand what they’re agreeing to, and privacy policies and consent pop-ups routinely fail to explain this, the report says.
What’s next: The UK’s regulator is notoriously light-touch. It has said it will give ad tech companies time to respond before it revisits these issues in six months’ time, while also acknowledging that there is no evidence the industry will address its concerns or change voluntarily.
However, other European regulators—including the EU Commission itself—may be less cautious. There are at least 10 pending legal complaints against this practice across the EU right now, so we can expect to see European regulators taking a closer and closer look at this industry in the coming months.
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Charlotte Jee
ImageMs. Tech
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