Plus: ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

March 18, 2025 | Read online
# Web inventor slag off Meta's 'walled garden', Amazon kills local Alexa and hacked company needed multi-factor authentication Plus: How emoji code was used to hack US Treasury
Issue 2293 - Tuesday 18 March 2025
Hello! I wrote a short Behind the Sizzle re: the deals section, prompted by some feedback I got from Sizzler Phil yesterday. If you’re a deal demon 😈 make sure to weigh in — CW
# The News
### World Wide Web inventor slags off Meta, makes case for open social media standards
Governments should force social media platforms into being interoperable, Tim Berners-Lee reckons (FT). The inventor of the World Wide Web has “reservations” about the state of the internet, saying “a [social media] company whose bottom line is determined by the time that people spend on a platform” — no points for guessing who — has locked people into a toxic and polarised online walled garden. Berners-Lee, who is also spruiking his new start-up that is making a personal AI assistant trained on your data, says the solution is open social media standards (Solid Project). What I like about the essay is that he actually makes a positive case about things that could be better, rather than just (rightly) complaining about how broken everything is now. As you know, I’m a big open standards guy but, let’s be real: people just want stuff that works for them. Berners-Lee gets that convincing people to make the switch means being specific about how their lives would improve.
We did not insist that we could share our Facebook photos with our LinkedIn colleagues, for example. Nor did we insist that we could use the same identity and transfer the same friend list from Instagram to X and then to Reddit.
Tim Berners-Lee
### Amazon kills local Alexa feature
Relatedly, Amazon is killing a feature that let its Alexa assistant work locally and avoid sending voice recordings to the cloud (Gizmodo). The company has sent an email to Alexa owners essentially saying that they need to gobble up that data for their new Alexa AI project.
Imgur source
It sucks that they’re taking away this feature. I also think that there are a lot of cool things in technology that rely on externally sharing data, and that doing so isn’t unequivocally a bad idea. Like, if you want Alexa or Siri to be able to answer a request like “can you find out when my mum’s plane is going to land”, you are going to need to give it access to data including your messages, contacts, and online flight tracking data. The solution to the data hungry companies who are irresponsible with our data isn’t hoarding everything from them, but — in the spirit of what Berners-Lee is talking about — is having more information and granular control over what we are sharing and how.
### Hacked Australian company being sued didn’t use multi-factor authentication
Australia’s corporate watchdog is suing a finance firm for having truly dogshit cybersecurity that led to having 18,000 of its clients’ data stolen by hackers (Information Age). ASIC alleges FIIG Securities broke the terms of its financial services licence by failing to protect its clients from Russian ransomware gang AlphV, which stole “highly sensitive customer information” including drivers’ licences, passports, TFNs and bank account details. According to ASIC, the company failed to patch its software, properly use firewalls and lacked multi-factor authentication in some situations, lol. FIIG hasn’t publicly said much in response. Also in cybersecurity news, India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs allegedly left open an AWS bucket with 1.9 million people’s records (CyberNews). Oops.
#### Leftovers
"Reshaped" National AI Centre to be run by ex-Microsoft Australia CTO (IT News) Australian security officials based in China using WeChat to speak to family, colleagues despite surveillance fears (7 News) Late Immutable accounts a glimpse into crypto game developer’s health (AFR, $) RedNote: The Chinese app shaping the Australian election (The Saturday Paper, $) AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality (404 Media, $) Bluesky users debate plans around user data and AI training (TechCrunch) Google has a fix for all of the broken Chromecasts (The Verge) Trump plan to fund Musk’s Starlink over fiber called “betrayal” of rural US (Ars Technica) Roblox’s new AI model can generate 3D objects (The Verge) CommBank invests in $97b AI lab Anthropic (Capital Brief) Password reuse is rampant: nearly half of observed user logins are compromised (Cloudflare) Exclusive: Intel's new CEO plots overhaul of manufacturing and AI operations (Reuters) A Google-backed weapon to battle wildfires made it into orbit (TechCrunch) How Google's new anti-scraping measures are forcing an industry evolution (TechRadar) A sodium-ion portable power bank comes to market (The Verge)
# Oh, Also
### How emoji code was used to hack US Treasury
Remember when we found out those those Silk Typhoon attacks that pwned US Treasury (Cyber Daily). I came across this rather amusing newsletter that used a fun hook — emojis — to explain the details of how it happened (Slam Dunk Software). It’s a very accessible read but the TLDR is: an old bug in how some software processed Unicode, the standard for displaying characters ranging from alphanumeric symbols to the 💩 emoji, opened the door for a SQL injection attack which gave access to some of the most sensitive data in government. Bonus fun bit: the newsletter also alerted me to Unicode Consortium’s official character adoption program (Unicode). It is now my life’s goal to sponsor an emoji. But which one…..
# Bargains
Electrical & Electronics
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Computing
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Mobile
15% off Travel eSIM Card at Nesa Mobile
# The End
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