What’s up with Whatsapp?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Digital Innovation, TechLeave a comment

Image result for whats app

You may have seen the numerous press articles this week advising you to update your Whatsapp. The advice came from Whatsapp, which has 1.5 billion users and is owned by Facebook.

The reason for asking people to update the app on their smartphones was the discovery that hackers had been able to remotely install surveillance software on phones via a “major vulnerability” in the app. According to the BBC, WhatsApp said the attack targeted a “select number” of users and was orchestrated by “an advanced cyber-actor”.

Facebook discovered the flaw in the technology earlier this month. It threatened to break Whatsapp’s promise to its users of being a secure” communications app with messages that are end-to-end encrypted. This means they should only be displayed in a legible form on the sender or recipient’s device. However, the surveillance software would have let an attacker read the messages on the target’s device.

The Whatsapp team found a fix for the problem last Friday, after which people could download the new app without the ‘bug’, although some users appeared to be disgruntled that Facebook hadn’t published any notes about the fix itself.

It is likely that those whose phones may have been targeted by the hackers are “Journalists, lawyers, activists and human rights defenders,” Ahmed Zidan of the Committee to Protect Journalists told the BBC.

How did hackers use the security flaw?

One thing they did was use Whatsapp’s voice call function to ring a target’s phone. Even if the target didn’t answer the call, the surveillance software was installed on their phone. Furthermore, the call was removed from the call log, so the person who didn’t answer it, wouldn’t even see that they had missed a call from an unknown number.

Facebook and Whatsapp told the press on Monday: “The attack has all the hallmarks of a private company reportedly that works with governments to deliver spyware that takes over the functions of mobile phone operating systems.”

It also issued a briefing to security specialists stating, “”A buffer overflow vulnerability in WhatsApp VOIP [voice over internet protocol] stack allowed remote code execution via specially crafted series of SRTCP [secure real-time transport protocol] packets sent to a target phone number.”

The attack was old-fashioned

As Professor Alan Woodward pointed out, this is a “pretty old-fashioned” method of attack. He explained what happened: “A buffer overflow is where a program runs into memory it should not have access to. It overflows the memory it should have and hence has access to memory in which malicious code can potentially be run. If you are able to pass some code through the app, you can run your own code in that area. In VOIP there is an initial process that dials up and establishes the call, and the flaw was in that bit. Consequently you did not need to answer the call for the attack to work.”

We don’t know how many people were targeted in this attack, and there are some questions that remain to be answered about whether updating the app on your phone effectively removes the spyware in its entirety. Furthermore, WhatsApp has not said whether the attack could extend beyond WhatsApp and reach other personal data on the phone.

But, even if you are not a journalist, a lawyer or a human rights activist, download the new version of the app, because as always it is better to be safe than sorry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s happening with the price of bitcoin?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, cryptoLeave a comment

Yesterday bitcoin was just over $7,000 and as I sat down to write today, it was over $8,000. Indeed, the altcoins like ETH, LTC and XRP had also risen significantly overnight. It’s remarkable to think that it is not that many weeks since bitcoin’s price was under $4,000 and now it has doubled.

It’s because of Facebook

The question everyone always wants the answer to is, “What is making bitcoin’s price surge like this?” Billy Bambrough attributes it in part to Facebook ramping up its plans for a token to rival bitcoin. He reported in one of his articles that Spencer Bogart, a partner at venture capital firm Blockchain Capital, said that Facebook’s plans had “lit a fire in the pants of every major [financial technology] and financial institution in the U.S.” Bogart also believes that Facebook’s move into the crypto arena “will be a catalyst for mainstream bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption around the world, spurring other financial and technology companies to get into bitcoin and crypto.”

Relative strength index is up

Bambrough also says in another article: “Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI), used to identify the momentum behind asset prices, this week registered its highest value since the beginning of 2018 — shortly after bitcoin hit its all-time highs.”

What we have seen since bitcoin hit its massive high of $20,000 in December 2017, has been a lot of discontent with the crypto market and a stalling of adoption by major retailers. Still, the leading cryptocurrency always has its stalwart supporters, such as Mike Novogratz and other bitcoin bulls. Their price predictions, while not yet achieved, look a little more likely to happen than they did only a couple of months ago.

Bitcoin follows a pattern

Indeed, analysts from investment bank Canaccord Genuity said they expect bitcoin to rally hard over the next 24 months, potentially returning to its late 2017 highs. They believe that next year’s halving of bitcoin, which reduces the return to miners by 50%, could be one of the reasons that bitcoin’s price keeps pushing higher.

Canaccord’s analysts also noted that what we are seeing right now is “the striking similarity in bitcoin’s price action between 2011–2015 and 2015–2019.” What they are pointing to here is that bitcoin appears to have a four-year cycle, which is related to its halving that also happens in that same time period. They also predict that there may be “a slow climb back toward its all-time high of ~$20,000, theoretically reaching that level in March 2021.”

And there is one other thing happening at the moment that could be benefiting bitcoin’s price, and that is the US-China trade war over tariffs. While the digital assets market is soaring, the stock markets are falling, especially after China announced tariffs on American goods in a tit-for-tat reaction to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.

As ever, it is a combination of things that is contributing to the surge in bitcoin’s price, but it is hard to say which one of them is having the greatest effect.

Chinese workers are right to protest ‘996’ work culture

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn BusinessLeave a comment

Perhaps you are wondering what is the significance of ‘996’? I was initially puzzled myself. Then I learnt that in China it refers to the hours and days of work demanded of employees by the big tech companies” 9am to 9pm, six days per week. That’s 72 hours of work per week. The employees have no time for a life.

As James Stanier asks in his OneZero article: “Is this the price it takes to get ahead in the booming Chinese economy, or is this a symptom of a hustle culture that has gotten way out of hand?”

Jack Ma is in favour of 996

Stanier presents an excellent example of the mindset behind ‘996’ in the shape of Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba. This one of the world’s largest online retail companies. Ma, who is worth billions, has got himself into hot water with workers following his comments on WeChat (a Chinese social media channel) about 996 culture.

Some of you may be stunned by Ma’s comments: “Many companies and many people don’t have the opportunity to work 996. If you don’t work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996? In this world, everyone wants success, wants a nice life, wants to be respected. Let me ask everyone, if you don’t put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?”

No doubt Marx and Engels and a few others would have had a suitable answer for him. But Ma isn’t alone in supporting this approach. Stanier has uncovered emails from other Chinese companies, such as JD.com and Youzan that show management’s preference for working employees to the limit. One email from JD.com stated, “underperforming employees are those who don’t keep “fighting” to do more work “regardless of performance, position, tenure, personal well-being issues or family reasons.” And at a Youzan company event, the management demanded that employees follow a 996 routine.

Workers protest online

However, it seems that workers are not blindly accepting this regime. A website called 996.ICU, hosted by Github. The site’s name refers to “work by 996, sick in Intensive Care Unit,” which sums up the burnout and ill health workers suffer by working a 72-hour week.

The website highlights the fact that Chinese labour laws prohibit more than eight hours of work per day and 44 hours per week in a standard contract. Anyone working more hours should be paid overtime. It has a list of Chinese companies using the 996 practice, including controversial Huawei.

In the West we take the right to strike or protest as a given. But in China things are not so supportive of workers. It seems that the conversations online about 996 are being censored and blocked by the big tech companies: try to access 996.ICU via Tencent’s QQ browser and a pop-up message will tell you it is a “malicious site.”

Don’t let 996 become a global practice

It is somewhat understandable that China’s tech companies adopted the 996 regime in order to have first advantage in the global market. Some of them have been so successful that newer companies follow their strategy, believing that is the sure route to success. But as Stanier describes it, “It utilizes sheer brute force to beat the competition and capture a market.” And, while these punishing hours may work with repetitive tasks, how can designers and programmers maintain a high level of quality work under such pressure. To my mind, this is a form of modern slavery that will eventually damage China’s tech companies and perhaps foment a greater rebellion than protests on the Internet.

And we must watch out for it moving to the West. There are those in Silicon Valley who admire Jack Ma and have voiced an opinion that 996 is, “the same work ethic that built America.” We must maintain our sanity, and focus on strategy and efficiency rather than imposing insane working hours on employees. As the saying goes, you can’t flog a dead horse, and that is what tech companies are heading towards by treating their workers like machinery.

Trump pushes China to the limit

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Business, GovernmentsLeave a comment

Never mind Mueller’s report, Trump has his sights set on China this week, and as usual he has been tweeting about it. On 6th May he tweeted: “The United States has been losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade. With China we lose 500 Billion Dollars. Sorry, we’re not going to be doing that anymore!”

The President appears to be determined to escalate the US-China trade war and it appears to be ‘personal’, although he portrays it as a move in the national interest. He’s raising the trade tariff on Chinese imports to 25% this Friday, a large hike up from 10 percent.

Trump says that Chinese exports to the USA worth $200 billion will be slapped with this tariff. Furthermore, the same tariff will be imposed on other Chinese goods worth $325 billion, which are currently untaxed.

What effect has the announcement had?

Obviously there have been more than a few very miffed Chinese. And Chinese investors had a wobble, because they dumped stocks following the announcement. As a result, China’s major stock indexes plunged by the highest level since February 2016. Stock indexes also took a beating: the Shanghai Composite Index and the CSI 300 index fell by over 5 percent. Ken Cheung, senior Asian FX strategist at Mizuho Bank in Hong Kong told Reuters, “The market is re-pricing the situation, as investors had thought trade negotiations were coming to an end.”

Why escalate a trade war now?

Trump’s decision to raise the tensions between two of the world’s biggest economies came at a moment when the US economy is in boom mode. As Mark Emem writes at Forbes: “The non-farm payrolls jobs report which was released Friday indicated that the unemployment levels had fallen to 3.6 percent. This was the lowest figure since 1969.”

Some commentators have suggested that the positive state of the US economy has led the President to believe that the country is in such a strong position that he has the upper hand in any trade negotiations. One Twitter user, Jim Cramer tweeted: “Is this the art of the deal? Or a recognition that our economy is stronger than theirs is and we don’t need them???”

And to quote Trump from his book “The Art of the Deal”: “MY STYLE of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”

As Emem writes, Trump smells blood, because China has more to lose than the USA, therefore Trump is following his own philosophy of simply piling on the pressure wherever he can. It was thought that a trade deal between the two countries would have been agreed by the end of this week, but that looks unlikely now. And unless they agree a deal on 9th May, China will have to start paying the higher tariffs from the following day. That doesn’t leave much time for the negotiations, which are supposed to start on 8th May.

Will the talks collapse due to Trump’s game play, or will he get what he wants from China? We don’t have to wait long to find out.