So far this year, we don’t think we’ve made it a week without reporting another cyber attack. This week is no different, with Iran blaming a foreign group for petrol supply issues. Chips are also in the news again with Apple blaming the shortages for a disappointing quarter. We’ve also got an outage for Roblox and a data collection firm breaching privacy laws.
Read this week’s top tech news:
Iran has blamed a foreign country for a paralysing cyberattack that targeted its petrol distribution network. A group calling itself Predatory Sparrow claimed it carried out the attack, but Iran's top internet policy-making body blamed an unnamed "state actor".
Irans President, Ebrahim Raisi, said the attack was about "stoking public anger".
The sophisticated attack hit an intranet-based system that lets motorists buy subsidised fuel with smart cards issued by the government, causing long queues at petrol stations.
The attackers also set their sights on digital billboards on highways in Tehran, making them display a message saying: "[Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, where is our fuel?"
Read the full story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-59062907
On Thursday, Apple announced lower than expected revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021 causing its shares to dip.
The company posted a quarterly revenue of $83.4bn, up 29% year over year but still short of predictions of $84.85bn.
Tim Cook, Apple CEO has blamed the shortcomings on supply-chain issues, citing industry-wide chip shortages and “Covid-related manufacturing disruptions in Southeast Asia”.
Due to the supply issues, Apple anticipates significantly more demand for its new iPhone 13 models than what it can supply.
Read the full article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/28/apple-earnings-fourth-quarter-loss-chip-shortages-slow-supply-chain
The company has described the outage as "especially difficult", but after 3 days the online gaming platform is finally back online.
The company said that a cyber attack was not to blame for the outage, and that it was actually a "subtle bug" that only cropped up when the company's communications servers came under heavy load.
"Due to the difficulty in diagnosing the actual bug, recovery took longer than any of us would have liked," the company added. It said that there was "no loss of player persistence data, and your Roblox experience should now be fully back to normal".
Read the full article: https://news.sky.com/story/roblox-back-online-after-three-day-outage-says-hackers-not-to-blame-12456975
Huq , a British firm which sells people's location data, has admitted that some of its information was gained without user permission.
Huq utilises location data from apps on individuals phones, and sells it on to clients, which include dozens of English and Scottish city councils.
It told the BBC that in two cases, its app partners had not asked for consent from users, but added that the issue had now been rectified.
The firm said it was aware of two "technical breaches" of data privacy requirements.
Read the full story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59063766
