News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Musk Says Twitter Limiting How Many Tweets Users Can Read

Twitter owner Elon Musk said Saturday that the social media platform will limit how many tweets users can read due to “extreme” levels of system manipulation and data scraping.

Musk said in a statement that Twitter has applied the following temporary limits on users, with new unverified accounts limited to reading just 300 posts per day.

The limits rise to 1,000 posts per day for existing unverified accounts, meaning ones without a blue checkmark, while verified accounts enjoy ten times the volume, 10,000 posts, per day.

Meanwhile, the quota for a new unverified account was raised to 500 posts per day.

Some users expressed disappointment about the throttling.

“Putting hard limits on reads is web 1.0 stuff,” wrote the Disclose.tv verified account, which has around 1.2 million followers.
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Earlier, Twitter announced it would require users to have an account on the social media platform to view tweets, a move that Musk on Friday called a “temporary emergency measure.”

Musk said at the time that hundreds of organizations or more were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively,” with a negative impact on user experience.

The Twitter chief had earlier expressed displeasure with artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, for using Twitter’s data to train their large language models.

India Court Rejects Twitter’s Plea Against Govt’s Content Blocking Orders

India’s Karnataka High Court on Friday denied a petition filed by Twitter to overturn the federal government’s content-blocking orders and fined the U.S.-based company 5 million rupees (around $61,000).

In its ruling, the court deemed the blocking orders against Twitter to be “reasoned decisions,” citing the “anti-national” element and the potential of the content to incite “cognizable offenses relating to the sovereignty and integrity of India.”

“Many of them have outrageous content; many are treacherous and anti-national; many have abundant propensity to incite commission of cognizable offenses relating to sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State and public order,” the court said.
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The court said that Twitter was levied for failing to comply with the government’s blocking orders on time.

“For more than a year, the blocking orders were not implemented by the petitioner, and there is no plausible explanation offered therefor,” it said. “There is a willful non-compliance of the blocking orders.”

The case dates back to 2021 when Twitter declined to fully comply with an order to take down accounts and posts that India alleged were spreading misinformation about anti-government protests by farmers.

The court said that Twitter was levied for failing to comply with the government’s blocking orders on time.

“For more than a year, the blocking orders were not implemented by the petitioner, and there is no plausible explanation offered therefor,” it said. “There is a willful non-compliance of the blocking orders.”

The case dates back to 2021 when Twitter declined to fully comply with an order to take down accounts and posts that India alleged were spreading misinformation about anti-government protests by farmers.

Federal Agency Confirms It Was Hit in Massive Cyberattack

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said that hackers have targeted it as part of a global cyberattack that exploited a software flaw.

In a statement to news outlets Thursday, the agency said that “no HHS systems or networks were compromised,” adding that “attackers gained access to data by exploiting the vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer software of third party vendors.”

“HHS is taking all appropriate actions … and will provide Congress with additional information as the investigation continues,” the agency, which oversees a range of programs, told The Hill and Reuters in a statement.

Earlier this month, it was confirmed that a multitude of federal agencies were impacted in a wide-ranging breach. The Department of Energy was reportedly affected in the attack and was asked to pay a ransom.

Hackers behind the massive breach also claimed credit for stealing data from two major law firms, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and K&L Gates LLP. The ransomware gang known as Cl0p posted the names of Kirkland & Ellis LLP and K&L Gates LLP to its leak site, typically a sign that negotiations between the victims and the hackers had broken down.

HHS’s name did not appear among Cl0p’s list of purported victims. The group has previously insisted it doesn’t deliberately steal data from government organizations, but that doesn’t mean that data haven’t been compromised.

Believed by researchers to be a Russian-speaking group of hackers, Cl0p was recently able to gain access to a wide swathe of organizations’ data by compromising MOVEit Transfer, a file commercial management tool made by Progress Software.

Earlier this month, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is run by the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed federal agencies were targeted.

Russian Court Fines Google an Additional $47 Million

A Russian court has fined Alphabet’s Google 4 billion roubles ($47 million) for failing to pay an earlier fine over alleged abuse of its dominant position in the video hosting market, the country’s anti-monopoly watchdog said on Tuesday.

Google was fined 2 billion roubles in February 2022. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) at the time said Google’s YouTube had a “non-transparent, biased and unpredictable” approach to “suspending and blocking users’ accounts and content,” the TASS news agency reported.

Google ultimately appealed that decision.
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The FAS said the previous fine it imposed on Google had been doubled due to non-payment.

“The company must additionally pay more than 4 billion roubles to the Russian Federation’s budget,” the FAS concluded.

YouTube, which has blocked Russian media globally, is under heavy pressure from Russian state bodies and politicians, but Moscow has stopped short of blocking it, a step taken against the likes of Twitter and Meta’s Facebook, and Instagram.

Google stopped selling online advertising in Russia in March 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but has kept some free services available. Its Russian subsidiary officially filed for bankruptcy after authorities seized its bank account, making it impossible to pay staff and vendors.

Google Lays Off Staff at Its Mapping App Waze

Alphabet-owned Google on Tuesday said it is cutting jobs at mapping app Waze as it merges the app’s advertising system with Google Ads technology, without giving details on the number of layoffs.

“In order to create a better, more seamless long-term experience for Waze advertisers, we’ve begun transitioning Waze’s existing advertising system to Google Ads technology. As part of this update, we’ve reduced those roles focused on Waze Ads monetization,” Google, which acquired Waze for about $1.3 billion in 2013, said.

Google had in December said that it will merge Waze and Google Maps teams to consolidate processes, making it a part of the Google Geo division, its portfolio of real-world mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.

Study Accuses Google of Violating
Promised Advertising Standards and Misleading Businesses

Google allegedly misled numerous companies by violating its promised quality standards while placing video ads on third-party websites and apps, thus potentially costing these firms billions of dollars, according to a recent report.

Google’s TrueView delivers advertisements on YouTube as well as millions of third-party apps and websites. Google charges a premium from customers promising that their ads will be run on high-quality websites, along with audio. In addition, advertisers using TrueView only pay for “actual views of their ads, rather than impressions,” Google claims. However, a report published by advertising research firm Adalytics this week found that “significant quantities” of TrueView ads were run on thousands of apps and websites that did not meet Google’s claimed standards. This has been observed to be happening for the past three years, thus potentially costing ad buyers billions in digital ad dollars.

The report states that many TrueView ads were served on independent websites with no audio. “Often, there was little to no organic video media content between ads, the video units simply played ads only.”
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According to the findings, Google had served brand ads on websites that had tens of thousands of copyright violation claims, suggesting these were potential piracy sites where copyrighted content could be downloaded illegally. Thousands of TrueView ads were found delivered to bots running from Google cloud data center servers.

Some ads were served on apps that are not allowed on Google Play Store, with a few of these apps developed by vendors from countries sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, such as Iran.

Nvidia Reacts to Possible US Chip Restrictions to Beijing

Nvidia is downplaying possible U.S. chip-export restrictions to China by the Biden administration.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 27 that the White House was mulling even more restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) chip exports to China.

A potential chip ban could affect Nvidia’s status as the world’s leader for the graphics processors needed to build AI software like ChatGPT.

Nvidia’s latest A100 and H100 chips are highly desired by tech firms around the world to build advanced AI systems.

The U.S. Department of Commerce might stop chip shipments by Nvidia and other manufactures to customers in China as early as July, the report said.

The White House is increasingly concerned that the company’s technology could be used for military or espionage purposes by the Chine Communist Party (CCP).

Nvidia, Micron, and AMD are the chipmakers most affected by the escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington, and they may take a multibillion-dollar hit.

The United States had already persuaded the top chip equipment manufacturers of the Netherlands and Japan to join its policy on curbing technological access to Beijing.

On the other hand, the Biden administration allowed chip makers in South Korea and Taiwan to continue operating and expanding their existing plants in China that produce older and less advanced chips.

The Commerce Department ordered the San Jose, California-based tech giant last September to stop exporting two advanced computer chips models for AI work to China.
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China has been one of the largest markets for semiconductors for years.

Atif Malik, an analyst at Citi, wrote in a note that last year’s restrictions on China had a $400 million impact on sales, which could rise even higher due to increased demand for chips.

Didn't the Pentagon admit the other day that China was using American technology against the US?
Of course, they later commented that they couldn't transmit data back to China. Let's hope so but I wouldn't bet on it at all.