China Plans Online Payment Rules That May Hit Ant, Tencent

hackingbear writes: People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, said on Wednesday that any non-bank payment company with half of the market in online transactions or two entities with a combined two-thirds share could be subject to antitrust probes, potentially dealing another blow to financial technology giant Ant Group Co. and its biggest rival Tencent Holdings Ltd. Ant’s Alipay accounts…

A Chinese Hacking Group Is Stealing Airline Passenger Details

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A suspected Chinese hacking group has been attacking the airline industry for the past few years with the goal of obtaining passenger data in order to track the movement of persons of interest. The intrusions have been linked to a threat actor that the cyber-security has been tracking under the name of Chimera….

Massive Blackouts Have Hit Iran. The Government is Blaming Bitcoin Mining.

Massive blackouts and smog have hit cities across Iran. It’s a toxic mix as the country, already under economic duress and suffocating U.S. sanctions, simultaneously battles the region’s worst coronavirus outbreak. Blackouts are not new in Iran, where an aging and subsidized electricity sector is plagued by alleged mismanagement. But this time, government officials say that bitcoin mining at cryptocurrency farms…

SoftBank-Backed WhatsApp Rival Hike Goes Off the Air in India

Hike, the messaging app backed by SoftBank Group that aimed to compete against WhatsApp in the world’s second-most populous country, shut down and vanished from app stores Monday. From a report: The startup valued at $1.4 billion in a 2016 funding round announced its app was going off the air earlier this month without explanation. The app started by billionaire-family scion…

Report: US Halts Huawei’s Suppliers, Including Intel, in Last Blow to China’s 5G

“The Trump administration notified Huawei suppliers, including chipmaker Intel, that it is revoking certain licenses to sell to the Chinese company and intends to reject dozens of other applications,” Reuters reports, citing sources familiar with the matter: One of the sources said eight licenses were yanked from four companies. Japanese flash memory chip maker Kioxia Corp had at least one license…

MacOS Malware Used Run-Only AppleScripts To Avoid Detection For Five Years

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: For more than five years, macOS users have been the targets of a sneaky malware operation that used a clever trick to avoid detection and hijacked the hardware resources of infected users to mine cryptocurrency behind their backs. Named OSAMiner, the malware has been distributed in the wild since at least 2015 disguised…

MIT Professor Charged With Hiding Work For China

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was charged Thursday with hiding work he did for the Chinese government while he was also collecting U.S. dollars for his nanotechnology research. The Associate Press reports: Gang Chen, 56, was arrested by federal agents at his home in Cambridge on charges including wire fraud, officials said. While working for MIT, Chen entered into undisclosed…

Researchers conduct security analysis and improve quantum random number generation

Recently, the research team led by academician GUO Guangcan from the University of Science and Technology of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made security analysis and improvement of source independent quantum random number generators with imperfect devices. …

YouTube and WhatsApp Inch Closer To Half a Billion Users in India

An anonymous reader shares a report: WhatsApp has enjoyed unrivaled reach in India for years. By mid-2019, the Facebook-owned app had amassed over 400 million users in the country. Its closest app rival at the time was YouTube, which, according to the company’s own statement and data from mobile insight firm App Annie, had about 260 million users in India then….

China Gives US Tech the Silent Treatment

Patience may be a virtue. For U.S. tech companies looking to do deals that involve China, it is also an expensive necessity. From a report: Cisco Systems and Applied Materials each received different lessons on that score last week. On Friday, Cisco found its $2.6 billion deal to buy Acacia Communications in serious jeopardy after Acaia announced it was terminating the…