Real estate firm hacked
A large Australian real estate outfit appears have been hacked with its internal records and listings visible on the internet.
Hello and welcome to The Download, The Australian’s technology blog for the latest tech news.
Chris Griffith 4.50pm: Real estate firm hacked
A large Australian real estate outfit appears have been hacked with its internal records and listings visible on the internet. The Australian is attempting to contact the company involved.
The hackers have left a calling card. An index of visible files includes a record with an entry: “you — base — was — hacked — and — dumped” and another that says “you — have — 7days — to — contact — us”.
The information includes an email address “wegetyourdb@protonmail.ch”, which uses a Switzerland-based email domain that offers anonymous, encrypted email services.
Files visible from the internet include internal records of properties for sale with internal details such as street address, sale type, bedrooms, carparking, price, whether the property is affordable, and whether it is a suitable holiday dwelling.
Tests on the website shodan.io shows many of the real estate company system’s ports are open, making the site vulnerable to hacking from outside.
The Australian was contacted by a frustrated source who had been seeking unsuccessfully to point out this problem to the company involved.
David Swan 4.00pm: Fitbit unveils stress-tracking smartwatch
Fitbit on Tuesday unveiled a fitness tracker and two smartwatches, including one that purports to help monitor users’ stress levels and could even detect COVID-19., as the company’s pending sale to Google remains mired in antitrust reviews globally.
The Fitbit Sense, priced at $US329, replaces the Ionic as the 13-year-old company’s most expensive smartwatch, excluding a limited edition model. It also is the first to measure electrodermal activity, or how well skin conducts electricity, which varies with sweating and can indicate stress. The feature is pending approval from health regulators.
Fitbit co-founder Eric Friedman said the company had worked with organisations including Stanford University to help detect coronavirus symptoms.
“Today we’re working to help develop a means to screen for COVID-19 before symptoms start,” he said.
“Our goal is to be able to alert people that they may be sick before they notice symptoms so they can isolate and get tested, helping to stop the spread of the virus.”
He added that Fitbit launched a study of 100,000 users in the US and Canada to “build an algorithm that detects potential signs of COVID-19”, including testing users’ resting heart rates, heart-rate variability, and breathing rate.
According to the executive, the Fitbits could “detect nearly 50 per cent of COVID-19 cases a day before the onset of symptoms with 75 per cent specificity.”
The research is now being peer reviewed, and will be “fast tracked”, he said.
Fitbit research scientist Samy Abdel-Ghaffar said a new stress score would help users decide whether to take on a fresh project or instead take a break, sleep early or meditate.
The company also announced the Versa 3 smartwatch, priced at $229 and upgraded from its predecessor to include a GPS sensor and phone-calling functionality; and the Inspire 2 activity tracker, running $100 with a tweaked design.
The devices ship in late September, with pre-orders available immediately.
The company has lost wearables market share to Apple and others since going public five years ago. Fitbit announced last week that a new content subscription to stoke revenue growth has 500,000 paying users, but shares barely moved.
About 5pc of wearables shipped last year globally came from Fitbit, behind leader Apple’s 32pc share, according to tracker IDC.
Aiming to challenge Apple together, Google agreed to buy Fitbit for $US2.1 billion last November. But competition regulators in the UK, United States and many other jurisdictions are weighing whether the acquisition would unfairly deepen Google’s data about users’ habits. Fitbit said the reviews may delay closing the deal to 2021.
Meanwhile, Google and Fitbit are partnering. Sense and Versa 3 by late this year will allow users to communicate with the Google Assistant helper, similar to Fitbit’s existing integration with Amazon’s Alexa.
Additional reporting: Reuters
David Swan 11.20am: Envato boss to depart
The chief executive of one of Australia’s most successful start-ups, Envato, is leaving after 14 years.
CEO Collis Ta’eed said that “the time is right to take a step back” from the digital design start-up he co-founded with wife Cyan.
“I’ve been telling our staff for a few years that it’s time for a change, to close this era in Envato’s history. Our business is transforming; we’re more global than ever before, more subscription oriented than at any time in our history, and we’re rapidly approaching $1 billion USD in total community earnings, which is a milestone that seemed almost fanciful when we set it a few years ago,” he said in a statement.
He added that the company was currently completing a hiring process for a new CEO, with an announcement to be made in coming months.
The Ta’eeds have built Envato into a local tech powerhouse – it now has more than 2 million customers every year and tens of thousands of creators and designers on its platform.
The couple are each worth about $463m, and feature in The Australian’s Richest 250 List.
The company also this week announced a 20 per cent payout to its global workforce of more than 600 people – a total of $3.75m.
“Profit share has become an integral part of Envato and helps connect the team with a share of the success they create through their efforts.
“I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing how many people connect with our company values as we’ve grown, and to hear them say they enjoy working somewhere values-driven has been a wonderful validation of what we started almost fifteen years ago,” continued Collis. “I’m sure there are other things I’m going to miss but it definitely feels like the right time.”
Chris Griffith 8.55am: NortonLifeLock offers dark web monitoring to consumers
A new service will let you trace whether your personal information is being stored or up for sale on the dark web.
NortonLifeLock says its Dark Web Monitoring service will search for more than 120 personal identifiable pieces of information. This includes email addresses, physical address, a phone number, driver‘s licence number, credit card, bank account numbers and gamer tags.
“With 42 per cent of Australian respondents now online gaming regularly, monitoring crucial information such as gamer tags is more important than ever,” it says.
But how will the company know your personal information to start with, and how does it safeguard it?
It says any personal data you provide is encrypted, and only a few selected employees who undergo training on how to handle personal data can access it. “These employees must provide their own credentials every time they access personal data and are subject to monitoring by our Information Security and Compliance team,” the company told The Australian.
“Your personal data is stored and managed by an advanced secure cloud database which is encrypted and protected with security measures.”
The feature will be available in Norton 360 from September 1.
8.30am: Epic Games wins partial reprieve against Apple
A California federal judge has granted the maker of “Fortnite” a partial reprieve in its battle against Apple, saying Epic Games can maintain access to the tech giant’s software-development tools but that its blockbuster video game, for now, would remain out of the App Store.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued the decision after a virtual court hearing in which attorneys for Epic and Apple defended their companies’ positions. “Apple has chosen to act severely, and by doing so, has impacted non-parties, and a third-party developer ecosystem,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote in her ruling.”
A spokesman for Epic declined to comment on the ruling Tuesday.
“We thank the court for recognising that Epic’s problem is entirely self-inflicted and is in their power to resolve,” Apple said in a Tuesday statement. “We look forward to making our case to the court in September.”
Apple planned to revoke Epic’s access to tools needed to distribute and update software across its devices on Friday unless Epic removed the mobile-payment system it introduced in “Fortnite,” which skirted Apple’s 30% commission on in-app purchases.
The judge’s ruling means that “Fortnite” players using an iPhone or iPad won’t be able to download the game’s next season when it launches Thursday. Android device users who previously obtained the app through Google Play would have to download it from Epic’s website or the Android app marketplace on Samsung devices.
The Wall Street Journal
8.40am: Investors back Oracle over Microsoft in TikTok bid
General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, two major investors in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, are manoeuvring to be part of a deal to acquire the US operations of the popular video-sharing app as it seeks to avoid a ban by the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The investment firms, which own large stakes in Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., are key drivers behind a possible bid for TikTok by a group including Oracle, the people said. The Oracle group emerged recently as a possible alternative to Microsoft, which said early this month that it was in talks to buy TikTok’s operations in the US and three other countries.
Microsoft had said it might invite some US investors to join its bid. But more recently Sequoia and General Atlantic grew concerned that they wouldn’t have a place in a Microsoft deal and looked for another potential tech partner that could give them a piece of the action, some of the people said.
They are now pushing the potential Oracle bid, which quickly won President Trump’s public support, although some of the people said the Microsoft talks are fluid and outside investors could still be included as minority investors in Microsoft’s bid.
Sequoia and General Atlantic both hold seats on ByteDance’s board. Sequoia’s seat is occupied by its China head, Neil Shen, while its efforts in the US to participate in an acquisition are being led by Global Managing Partner Doug Leone.
ByteDance has been under pressure to reach a deal to sell TikTok’s US arm ahead of a 45-day deadline the White House imposed in an August 6 executive order that bans the app.
The Wall Street Journal
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