’Massive spying’ uncovered in Chrome

Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser has been hit by a massive spyware campaign.

(FILES) In this file photo taken on January 18, 2019 a logo is pictured above the entrance to the offices of Google in London. (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP)

Welcome to The Download, The Australian’s new technology blog for the latest breaking tech news. Today, Google has overhauled its diversity targets and the Justice Department is proposing that Congress roll back legal protections for online platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter.

David Swan 4:23pm Massive spying on users of Google’s Chrome shows new security weakness

A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser, researchers at Awake Security told Reuters, highlighting the tech industry’s failure to protect browsers as they are used more for email, payroll and other sensitive functions.

Google said it removed more than 70 of the malicious add-ons from its official Chrome Web Store after being alerted by the researchers last month.

“When we are alerted of extensions in the Web Store that violate our policies, we take action and use those incidents as training material to improve our automated and manual analyses,” Google spokesman Scott Westover told Reuters.

Most of the free extensions purported to warn users about questionable websites or convert files from one format to another. Instead, they siphoned off browsing history and data that provided credentials for access to internal business tools.

Based on the number of downloads, it was the most far-reaching malicious Chrome store campaign to date, according to Awake co-founder and chief scientist Gary Golomb.

Google declined to discuss how the latest spyware compared with prior campaigns, the breadth of the damage, or why it did not detect and remove the bad extensions on its own despite past promises to supervise offerings more closely.

Reuters

David Swan 1:43pm WeWork ‘rebounding from COVID’

Office space provider WeWork is confident that that is well positioned to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, with the company reporting foot traffic up 50 per cent week-on-week.

Speaking to The Australian, General Manager at WeWork Australia and New Zealand Balder Tol said that the pandemic had hit Australian start-ups - and WeWork - hard, but the company was now bouncing back with businesses beginning to re-emerge.

“It’s an incredibly fluid situation that continues to evolve, but of course, for a couple of months since mid March, we saw less people in the space, as member companies started to work from home," Tol told The Australian.

Balder Tol.

"This is already starting to shift, as some states are beginning to return to the office. Last month we saw a 50 per cent jump in footfall week on week as members began to transition back to the workplace. With flexibility at the core of our business there's distancing available and it's easy to reconfigure our spaces to make it safe. "

He added that COVID-19 has shifted companies' thinking on what the future of office work will look like.

"One thing that’s front of mind for many is how to bring employees back to work in a safe and staggered way. In speaking with some of our enterprise members, we’re finding many organisations are actively seeking more space to accommodate professional distancing."

The news comes after recent reports showing WeWork's Australia subsidiary is relying on payments from its US parent to meet cashflow needs.

Recent research from Startup Genome shows COVID-19 has been incredibly challenging for the global start-up ecosystem. Almost three quarters (74 per cent) of startups saw their revenues decline, with major drops in revenue due to COVID’s effect on the industries those startups serve. WeWork has taken its start-up accelerator program WeWork Labs virtual, offering workshops, mentor sessions and global webinars online.

“Through our virtual Labs program, we’re opening our doors to support businesses beyond Sydney and Melbourne where our Labs are physically located, enabling more startups to achieve their goals, Monica Wulff, WeWork Labs Manager in Sydney said.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore just how adaptive and resilient our Aussie start-ups truly are. It’s also shone a light on just how vital collaboration and human connection is.

“As startups continue to navigate through unchartered territories, being able to access valuable resources like mentors and training from a global community like ours can make all the difference.”

Chris Griffith 1:30pm: Lime addresses e-scooter sudden stop syndrome

Hayley Adamson, 29, was left with a fractured jaw, 12 cracked teeth and eight stitches in her chin after her lime scooter braking malfunctioned while she was riding it in Brisbane in 2019.

The ACCC has rebuked Lime for failing to notify customers of serious safety concerns with its e-scooters.

Lime says it has provided a court-enforceable undertaking to notify customers about the safety of its e-scooters, including a ‘sudden stopping issue’ that caused serious injury to customers.

In an email to customers today, Lime says that in November 2018, it became aware of the ‘sudden stopping issue’ of some Gen 2 e-scooters.

“A number of users of Gen 2 e-scooters reported they experienced the sudden stopping issue and that they were seriously injured, as a result.” Lime says in the email. “We diagnosed the issue and determined that in specific cases, excessive brake force on the front wheel could occur, resulting in the e-scooter stopping unexpectedly.”

Lime says it disclosed the issue in a blog post in February 2019, and developed updates for the Gen 2 e-scooter’s firmware. “In our view, we had resolved this issue by 5 March 2019 and we have observed no additional incidents or firmware bugs of this kind.

“In the ACCC's view, we did not alert users of Gen 2 e-scooters to this issue early enough and should have alerted users more directly,” says Lime. “The ACCC considers we undermined the effective operation of Australia’s product safety regulations.”

Lime says it will supply only Gen 3 or other later models of e-scooters when it recommences operations in Australia after the pandemic.

It says it has undertaken to implement and maintain a Consumer Compliance Program in Australia for at least three years.

David Swan 11:45am Splitit lands Mastercard deal

Shares in ‘buy now, pay later’ provider Splitit are up 34 per cent, after the company announced a tie-up with Mastercard in a bid to ‘make Splitit a household name.’

The ASX-listed Afterpay rival said the multi-year agreement would help accelerate the roll-out of Splitit’s platform globally, and would be integrated at checkouts both in-store and online.

Splitit CEO Brad Paterson

The partnership will kick off in three test markets before a broader global rollout, and Splitit CEO Brad Paterson said Mastercard and Splitit will also jointly develop instalment and related products.

“We are very excited to be partnering with Mastercard who share our strong commitment to accelerating the adoption of instalment payments globally,” Mr Paterson said. “This is a fantastic way to broaden the distribution of our solution, leveraging Mastercard’s incredible global reach, and build out a range of instalment services. It’s a major plank in our strategy to grow through strategic partnerships to make Splitit a household name.”

Shares in Splitit were up 34 per cent to 88 cents at 11.45am AEST.

David Swan 11:40am COVID-19 providing ‘big data opportunity’

US cloud data provider Snowflake has teamed with Salesforce to offer native integrations, as COVID-19 accelerates an economy-wide transition to the cloud.

Speaking to The Australian, Snowflake co-founder and president Benoit Dageville said while COVID-19 has been a horrible experienc for much of the globe, it has presented opportunities for tech companies to accelerate digital transformation projects.

"Often data is siloed away, and organisations don't have good access to it," Dageville said. "We've had a lot of success bringing data siloes into our platforms to help it be shared, and accessed, and used to craete value."

"COVID as also accelerated the move towards the cloud. Everyone wants to move to the cloud now, and COVID has only accelerated it. COVID has definitely created more of an economic incentive to do it."

The country is also making investments in Australia, having operated a local data centre in Sydney since 2017.

"We've been in Australia for a couple of years, and we've managed to sign up customers like Wesfarmers and their Flybuys loyalty program," Snowflake's VP of Sales for APJ Peter O'Connor said. "They can share data in real time amongst all the different loyalty partners in that program. We have a lot of interest across government sectors as well, both state and federal, as well as large enterprise customers we can't name at the moment."

In February Snowflake announced $US479 million ($700m) in additional funding co-led by new investors, Dragoneer Investment Group and Salesforce Ventures, giving the company a valuation of $US12.4bn.

"We are becoming a bigger company, and we now have data sets which are being used by thousands of customers at a time. And that's the magic of offering a single platform, which is really global. We're running in 20-plus regions all over the world, and our platform is infinitely elastic."

Chris Griffith 11:15am: LinkedIn launches story feature

Water cooler gossip at work is going digital with LinkedIn launching its new workplace-oriented story feature in Australia starting today. LinkedIn says Australia will be the first country in the Asia Pacific region to test it.

LinkedIn has launched its new stories feature in Australia.

You can add stories in LinkedIn already, however the new feature recasts the professional oriented network as a more everyday social network carrying workplace anecdotes with shorter shelf lives.

“With LinkedIn Stories, members in Australia will have the opportunity to share their professional experiences and keep in touch with their community in a more visual way,” says editor at LinkedIn News, Natalie MacDonald. “Influencers will be able to pass on their learnings and LinkedIn Top Voices will have a new format to engage with real-time events.”

She says LinkedIn Stories offers a way to share everyday professional moments such as things you do at work, things relevant to your work, and things you do around work.

However there are rules around the new feature. You can upload a still image and video to your story, but videos are limited to 20 seconds. You can add text or a sticker, and mention other users with a “@” as you would in Twitter. However LinkedIn stories are short-lived, online for just 24 hours after publication.

10:40am: ACCC ‘concerned’ about Google’s Fitbit acquisition

Australia’s competition regulator has outlined preliminary concerns with Google’s proposed acquisition of Fitbit, saying that Google’s access to consumer health data may raise entry barriers, further entrench its dominant position and adversely affect competition in several digital advertising and health markets.

. (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP)

It says Fitbit has collected health information from consumers for more than 10 years, including users’ daily step counts, heart rate and sleep data.

“Our concerns are that Google buying Fitbit will allow Google to build an even more comprehensive set of user data, further cementing its position and raising barriers to entry to potential rivals,” says chair Rod Sims.

“The ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry found that Google’s substantial market power is built on its concentration of search and location data, and data collected via third-party websites and apps.”

Mr Sims says the ACCC will explore the uniqueness and potential value that Fitbit’s data poses for Google, and its likely competitors in the advertising and health markets, and whether Google is likely to favour its own wearables devices over competitors.

Read more.

Chris Griffith 10:10am: ASUS releases business computing range

Taiwan’s ASUS has launched a new Australian commercial range comprising three laptops - one with a claimed 24-hour battery life.

ASUS says its ExpertBook B9 laptop offers 24-hours battery life and is the lightest business laptop in the market, weighing from 870 grams. Top end models have a 10th generation Intel core processor, two 2TB solid state drives, Thunderbolt 3 ports and support the latest WiFi6 standard.

There’s a built in TPM 2.0 security chip and an IR camera for user security.

The second laptop, the ProArt StudioBook, is a powerful graphics-capable laptop designed for digital artists, animators, architects and programmers. It has an Intel Core i9 processor and separate Nvidia Quandro RTX 6000 graphics. There’s a 4K UHD Pantone validated display with Delta E

The final product is a 14-inch two-in-one Chromebook with up to a 10th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, WiFi 6 and omnidirectional quad speakers. It has an integrated fingerprint sensor.

Chris Griffith 9:50am: Oracle slams Google in fiery ACCC submission

Oracle has branded Google’s adtech advertising service as anticompetitive and monopolistic in a scathing submission to Australia’s competition regulator.

In February, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission launched an inquiry into digital advertising services and platforms with Treasurer John Frydenberg saying the government wanted to build a regulatory framework that better protected consumers and addressed bargaining power imbalances between digital platforms and media companies.

The ACCC is due to deliver an interim report by the end of the year and a final report by August 31 next year.

“We have provided evidence in this submission of the anticompetitive behaviour of Google in the supply of open display adtech services, largely considered from the perspective of advertisers,” the Oracle submission says.

“As we demonstrate, Google restricts advertisers from using non-Google adtech providers, either by directly prohibiting the use of such providers or by restricting access to data, which forecloses competition in important ways.”

Oracle says Google inhibits transparency by limiting the ability of advertisers to independently assess the effectiveness of their advertising. It says Google can sell low quality Google owned and operated ad inventory at a premium.

Read more.

9.41am: Zoom backtracks on encryption

Zoom is planning to offer all its free and paying users end-to-end encryption for video calls and will launch a trial version in July, the video conferencing provider said on Wednesday.

The company, whose business has boomed with the coronavirus lockdowns forcing more people to work from home, has transformed into a global video hangout from a business-oriented teleconferencing tool.

But it has also come under fire over privacy and security issues, and faced criticism for failing to disclose that its service was not fully end-to-end encrypted.

After a series of security failures resulted in some institutions banning the use of Zoom, the California-based company hired former chief security officer at Facebook Alex Stamos in April and rolled out major upgrades.

Reuters

9.28am: Twitter tests new voice tweeting featu re

Twitter on June 17, 2020 said it is adding an option to speak tweets of up to 140 seconds in length instead of just writing posts. (Photo by Olivier DOULIERY / AFP)

Twitter said on Wednesday it is testing a new feature that will allow users to tweet using their voice, capturing up to 140 seconds of audio in a single tweet.

The feature will be available to a limited number of users on Apple’s iOS platform for now and be rolled out for more iOS users in the coming weeks, Twitter said in a blog post here

The micro-blogging platform said users will be able to create a voice tweet using a new “wavelengths” icon on the Tweet composer screen.

Social media companies including Twitter have long been under pressure to curb content such as abuse, harassment and misinformation on their platforms.

“We are working to incorporate additional monitoring systems ahead of bringing this to everyone,” Twitter spokeswoman Aly Pavela told Reuters.

“We’ll review any reported voice tweets in line with our rules, and take action, including labeling, as needed.”

Twitter, which adds labels to content containing manipulated or synthetic media, has also started adding fact-checking labels to certain types of coronavirus and election-related misinformation, including to a tweet here by U.S. President Donald Trump about mail-in ballots.

Last month, Twitter also added a warning to a tweet by Trump about Minneapolis protests that it said glorified violence.

Reuters

6.11am: Google’s new hiring goal

Google announced Wednesday a new hiring goal to increase the number of black executives at the search giant.

Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in a memo to staff that he aimed to boost the proportion of “leadership representation of under-represented groups” by 30 per cent by 2025. He added that the Alphabet Inc. unit would provide $175 million in a mix of financing and funding to related businesses.

“Listening to the personal accounts of members of our Black Advisory Leadership Group and our Black+ Googlers has only reinforced for me the reality our Black communities face: one where systemic racism permeates every aspect of life, from interactions with law enforcement, to access to housing and capital, to health care, education, and the workplace,” Mr. Pichai wrote in the memo.

Dow Jones Newswires

6.10am: Department of Justice wants to roll back tech giants’ protections

The Justice Department is proposing that Congress roll back legal protections for online platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter that generally could not be held legally responsible for what people post on the sites.

The proposed changes to Section 230 of a major telecommunication overhaul from 1996 come weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order challenging the protections that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech on the internet.

Companies such as Twitter and Facebook are granted liability protection under the Communications Decency Act because they are treated as “platforms,” rather than “publishers,” which can face lawsuits over content. Without that shield, companies could face lawsuits from people who feels wronged by something someone else has posted.

One of the administration’s requests is that Congress strip the civil immunity protections for tech companies that may be complicit in unlawful activity on their platforms, according to a Justice Department official. For example, the proposal would remove the legal protection if an online platform purposefully solicited third parties to sell illegal drugs to minors, exchange sexually explicit photos or video of children or engage in other criminal activity, the official said.

AP

6.05am: US wants undersea data cable to skip Hong Kong

US Justice Department officials on Wednesday recommended that a high-capacity undersea data cable system proposed by Google and Facebook bypass Hong Kong, citing potential national security concerns following China’s moves to exert greater control in the territory.

The Pacific Light Cable Network pending approval by the Federal Communications Commission should connect the US, Taiwan, and the Philippines as planned but go through Hong Kong as planned, a Justice Department committee recommended.

The high-capacity, low-latency fibre optic cable backed by Google and Facebook would “encourage” US communications crossing the Pacific Ocean to land in Hong Kong before continuing on to other parts of Asia, the DoJ reasoned.

The recommendation to the FCC contended that the cable network’s “proposed Hong Kong landing station would expose US communications traffic to collection” by Beijing.

The concerns have been heightened by the Chinese government’s “recent actions to remove Hong Kong’s autonomy and allow for the possibility that (Beijing’s) intelligence and security services will operate openly in Hong Kong,” the DoJ said in a release.

Google and Facebook four years ago announced plans to work with a China Soft Power Holdings subsidiary to connect Los Angeles and Hong Kong with a high-capacity internet cable.

The Pacific Light Cable Network was to stretch 12,800 kilometres (8,000 miles), crossing beneath the Pacific Ocean in a first-of-its-kind direct connection between the two locations, according to companies involved with the project.

PLCN is expected to handle some 120 terabytes of data per second, enough capacity to enable 80 million high-definition video conference calls simultaneously between Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

Most Pacific subsea cables stretch from the US to Japan, Facebook noted at the time.

AFP

6.00am: Facebook allows blocking political ads

Facebook is allowing users to turn off all political ads in a move aimed at quelling criticism of the leading social network’s hands-off approach to election misinformation.

The feature being rolled out in the United States from Wednesday and some other countries will give Facebook and Instagram users the option of blocking paid ads from candidates and political groups.

The initiative announced late Tuesday comes amid intense pressure on Facebook and other social media services to stem the flow of false information while remaining open platforms for political debate.

Facebook has steadfastly rejected calls to fact-check politicians including a plea from Democratic White House hopeful Joe Biden to clamp down on what he called rampant disinformation from President Donald Trump.

Facebook vice president of product management and social impact Naomi Gleit said the initiative expands on the social network’s “ad preferences” options which already allowed users to see fewer political ads.

She said the feature was being made available “as part of our preparations for the 2020 US elections” and would be offered “in countries where we have enforcement on ads about social issues, elections and politics” later this year.