An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The U.S. has issued an emergency warning after Microsoft said it caught China hacking into its mail and calendar server program, called Exchange. The perpetrator, Microsoft said in a blog post, is a hacker group that the company has “high confidence” is working for the Chinese government and primarily spies on American…
Tag: contractors
Uber Loses Gig Workers Rights Challenge in UK Supreme Court
Uber has lost a long running employment tribunal challenge in the UK’s Supreme Court — with the court dismissing the ride-hailing giant’s appeal and reaffirming earlier rulings that drivers who brought the case are workers, not independent contractors. From a report: The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber’s business model (and other gig economy platforms) in…
How Oracle Sells Repression in China
In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it’s been marketing its own software for their surveillance work. From a report: Police in China’s Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records, travel information, vehicle registrations, social media, and surveillance camera footage. To make sense…
How the NSA’s Hubris Left America Vulnerable
A new book promises “the untold story of the cyberweapons market — the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth — and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.” Its author — a New York Times cybersecurity reporter — shares the book’s story about David Evenden, a former National Security Agency analyst who later worked in Abu…
After SolarWinds Breach, Lawmakers Ask NSA for Help in Cracking Juniper Cold Case
As the U.S. investigation into the SolarWinds hacking campaign grinds on, lawmakers are demanding answers from the National Security Agency about another troubling supply chain breach that was disclosed five years ago. From a report: A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are asking the NSA what steps it took to secure defense networks following a years-old breach…
Instacart To Cut 1,900 Jobs
Instacart plans to terminate about 1,900 employees’ jobs, including the only unionized positions in the U.S., representing a fulsome embrace of the gig economy. From a report: The grocery delivery company already classifies most of its workers as independent contractors, whose ranks have ballooned to more than 500,000 during the coronavirus pandemic. But starting in 2015, the company hired a small…
Robert Cringley Predicted ‘The Death of IT’ in 2020. Was He Right?
Yesterday long-time tech pundit Robert Cringley reviewed the predictions he’d made at the beginning of last year. “Having done this for over 20 years, historically I’m correct abut 70 percent of the time, but this year could be a disappointment given that I’m pretty sure I didn’t predict 370,000 deaths and an economy in free-fall. “We’ll just have to see whether…
Google Workers Unionize, Escalating Tension With Management
Employees of Google and parent company Alphabet announced the creation of a union on Monday, escalating years of confrontation between workers and management of the internet giant. From a report: The Alphabet Workers Union said it will be open to all employees and contractors, regardless of their role or classification. It will collect dues, pay organizing staff and have an elected…
How Do US Government Agencies Verify Security Software from Private Contractors?
A recent article at Politico argues that the U.S. government “doesn’t do much to verify the security of software from private contractors. And that’s how suspected Russian hackers got in.” The federal government conducts only cursory security inspections of the software it buys from private companies for a wide range of activities, from managing databases to operating internal chat applications. That…
Pushed by Pandemic, Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree Without Equal
Amazon has embarked on an extraordinary hiring binge this year, vacuuming up an average of 1,400 new workers a day and solidifying its power as online shopping becomes more entrenched in the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: The hiring has taken place at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, at its hundreds of warehouses in rural communities and suburbs, and in countries such…