### Issue 1557 - Tuesday 1st March, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Toyota and Nvidia hit by separate "cyberattacks"
- Lenovo's got an ARM based ThinkPad coming soon
- The cyberwar has only just begun
- Unsurprisingly, Facebook's automated verification of political ads in Australia, sucks
- Cheap Sony earbuds, JB Hi-Fi gift cards, Baseus power banks, WD 8TB HDD, Noctua CPU cooler, Samsung portable SSD, 2 months free NBN, SanDisk Extreme microSD, MacBook Air, Ryzen 9 5950X CPU

## The News

### Toyota and Nvidia hit by separate "cyberattacks"

Kojima Industries, a major supplier of plastic and electronics components to Toyota has been hit by a cyberattack. This supplier is so critical that Toyota had to shut down a few factories and lose about 13,000 cars of output. Japan's PM said "it is difficult to say whether this has anything to do with Russia before making thorough checks". Meanwhile, Nvidia has also been hit with some sort of cyberattack, causing "outages in Nvidia's email systems and developer tools over the last two days". The Lapsus$ data extortion group is claiming responsibility and says they'll release code to remove the hash rate limitations on the latest Nvidia GPUs designed to ease stock constraints for gamers, if Nvidia doesn't do it themselves soon.

### Lenovo's got an ARM based ThinkPad coming soon

Lenovo's announced their first ARM based ThinkPad - the X13s. It'll use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 and run Windows 11. The SoC has four Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz and four Cortex-A78 cores at 2.4 GHz and the small power consumption allows for a fanless design and a battery can lasts "up to 28 hours, based on local video playback". Lenovo reckons "performance should be in line with an Intel Core i5 CPU". It's got 2x USB-C Gen 2 ports, 5G support, up to 32GB RAM, PCIe 4.0 SSDs and a 1920x1200 display. Pricing starts at US$1,099 and goes on sale in May. There's also updated Intel and AMD based ThinkPads with the latest CPUs from those manufacturers.

### The cyberwar has only just begun

- Microsoft reckons Ukrainian networks (doesn't say which ones) were hit with a previously unseen type of malware they're calling Foxblade, just a few hours before Russian started its assault. Wow, what a coincidence.
- NASA said they're still going to operate the ISS along with Russia, with NASA officials still in Moscow and the team "operating just like we were operating three weeks ago". They still plan to have astronauts return to earth on Soyuz spacecrafts landing in Kazakhstan in a few weeks.
- Domain registrar Namecheap has cut off Russian customers, asking them to transfer domains to new registrars by March 6. Domains not moved will display a 403 HTTP error. Chinese companies Lenovo and DiDi have also tried to cut off Russia, but the Chinese government has forced them (unsure if literally or implied) to keep operating.
- Russian ransomware group Conti pledged "full support of the Russian government" and threatened to "use our all possible resources to strike back" at anyone attacking Russia in the cyberwar. This pissed off a member who then "leaked a cache of chat logs from the organization" exposing the inner workings of these crooks.
- Many cryptocurrency exchanges are ignoring Ukrainian leadership pleas to cut off Russian accounts. Not doing so allows crypto to be a backdoor for Russia to access global financial systems the world is trying hard to deprive Russia of. Binance even went as far to say that "to unilaterally decide to ban people's access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists".
- Looks like Musky boy's Starlink devices arrived in Ukraine. A friend and I were recently talking shit that they wanted to Russia could, technically, blow up a few Starlink satellites. They have the technology and recently showed it off.
- Take these with a grain of salt as I just saw them on Twitter, but some brave Belarusians hacked their nation's rail infrastructure with the hope of slowing Russia's military through their land. Anonymous claims to have renamed Putin's megayacht's callsign on the AIS to "FCKPTN" and changed its location to just outside of Ukraine. A bunch of EV chargers in Russia have been hacked to have their little status LCDs show "Putin is a dickhead" and "Glory to Ukraine".

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Unsurprisingly, Facebook's automated verification of political ads in Australia, sucks

Some think-tank called Reset managed to get misleading ads featuring conspiracy theories live on Facebook and aimed at Australians. The ads featured obvious bullshit like "unvaccinated Australians won't be allowed to vote, that major parties had been caught printing ballots, that voting would be electronic, and that the election would be cancelled due to COVID-19". They were all submitted without needing to disclose that they're about "social issues, elections or politics", but Facebook approved them all anyways. Maybe a human would come along sooner or later and shitcan them. It's gonna be a fun election.

## Bargains

- Sony WF-1000XM4 wireless earbuds - $314 from David Jones and Amazon
- 10% off JB Hi-Fi gift cards at Woolworths (limit 10 per customer)
- Lots of Baseus power banks are cheap (10Ah, 20Ah, 30Ah with 15W and 20W outputs) from Baseus' eBay store
- WD Blue WD80EAZZ 8TB HDD - $189 + delivery from Umart
- Noctua NH-U14S CPU cooler - $103 from Newegg
- Samsung T7 1TB external SSD - $149 from Amazon
- 2 months free NBN (even 1000/50) on Origin Broadband
- SanDisk Extreme 256GB microSD card - $44.99 from Shopping Square
- Apple MacBook Air M1 256GB SSD/512GB SSD - $1359/$1699 from Amazon
- AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU - $854.10 from Shopping Express' eBay store (affiliate link)

## The End

📻 Godzilla - Fu Manchu

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

💬 Checked out the paid subscriber only forum? It's a tidy little place to discuss tech with like minded Aussies.

👋 Forums not your thing? The Sizzle has a Slack group you can procrastinate in and chat with other nerds bored at work.

💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info or change email address? Visit the customer portal.

📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.

## Affiliate Links

Fastmail. Email where you are the customer, not the product. Loads of features, smooth no-nonsense web interface, plus calendar and contact hosting. They've been around for 20 years and I've been a customer for over 10. Use this link and get 10% off your first year and I get around 30c/month you remain a customer.

Aussie Broadband. Great customer service and responsive to community needs (they have an "unofficial" Discord, they publish their CVC!). I've been a customer since 2017 and don't plan on going anywhere. Use my referral code (1001031) to get $50 credit when signing up for an NBN plan and I get $50 credit towards my next bill.

Vultr. All my Australian-based hosting needs (3x VPSes) are handled by Vultr. Easy to use admin interface, automatic backups, built-in firewall, custom ISO support and reasonable prices. Sign up with my link and score $100 credit. I get $25 credit if you're active for 30+ days and spend at least $25.

## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.