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Twitter pins its July 15th breach on a phone spear phishing attack

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Two weeks after a massive breach saw hackers take over some of the most prominent accounts on Twitter — including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Joe Biden and Bill Gates — the company has published more details about how it happened. While a number of people from the “OGUsers” gray market forum provided details about a “Kirk” who was the source of access to internal tools, it was unclear how they came by that access in the first place.

Joe Biden hacked tweet

Twitter

According to Twitter, the answer is a phone spear phishing attack that targeted a “small number” of employees who did not all have access to management tools. However, attackers then “used their credentials to access our internal systems and gain information about our processes.” Twitter didn’t confirm a report that the access came from finding logins for the admin tool in a Slack channel, but it didn’t quite rule that out either, nor did it provide any clarity about who may have been behind the initial attack.



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Epic Games Store adds support for community-made mods

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Besides its exclusives, something PC gamers have consistently criticized the Epic Games Store over is its less robust feature set than Steam. Mod support was one of the big ones. The Steam Workshop allows you to download, install and manage modifications easily. And for all of the things Steam could do better, mod support is one thing it absolutely nails. The fact the Epic Games Store didn’t have a mod manager before today was a notable absence.     

But like with many other features, Epic has done a good job of slowing narrowing the gap between the Games Store and Steam. Some of the more recent features Epic added to the marketplace include achievements, cloud saves and, most notably, self-serve refunds.

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Apple confirms its new iPhones will be delayed by a ‘few weeks’

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For years, people have been buying brand new iPhones in September, typically weeks after a splashy press conference at Apple’s ring-shaped headquarters. Not so, this year. During a customary post-earnings conference call, Luca Maestri — the company’s Chief Financial Officer — confirmed that Apple’s new iPhones would be arriving later than usual

“As you know, last year we started selling new iPhones in late September,” Maestri said. “This year, we project supply to be available a few weeks later.”

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2K’s upcoming NFL games will feature real pro players

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2K’s forthcoming football games will feature real NFL pros thanks to a new deal the publisher signed with the NFL Players Association. The agreement allows the company to use the names, numbers, images and likenesses of more than 2,000 current professional NFL players.

“We’re thrilled to be working with the NFLPA and OneTeam to bring the biggest and best stars in football to the games we’re working on,” said 2K President David Ismailer. “We want to give fans experiences that are authentic, memorable and fun, and having a roster of real-life sports heroes through the Players Association and OneTeam is a huge part of delivering on that promise.”

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The recent ad boycott hasn’t slowed down Facebook

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During a call with analysts, Mark Zuckerberg said that hate speech and misinformation are only a “small part” of the content on Facebook. “We do not profit from misinformation or hate,” he said.

It’s not necessarily a surprise that Facebook would continue to flourish in the face of an advertiser backlash. While large corporations made headlines for pausing their spending, most of Facebook’s ad dollars comes from thousands of smaller businesses that aren’t able to abandon the platform as easily. Still, the results underscore just dominant Facebook is.

Facebook also continued to see a surge in user growth, a trend the company has attributed to coronavirus-induced lockdowns, which have driven more users to Facebook-owned services. Facebook grew its daily active users to 1.79 billion, up 12 percent from 2019, while DAUs for its “family of apps” grew to nearly 2.5 billon.

The company did caution that user growth would slow next quarter as things “normalize” and more people are able to resume their everyday activities.

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Apple achieves a quarterly record amid iPhone launch uncertainty

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It seems like Apple’s steady cadence of product releases in the midst of a pandemic has seriously paid off. The company released its Q3 2020 earnings this afternoon, in which it reported $59.7 billion in quarterly revenue and $11.25 billion in net income — that’s up significantly compared to Apple’s performance in the year-ago quarter. According to CEO Tim Cook, healthy growth across Apple’s product and services divisions and notable sales gains around the world over the past three months have been enough to make this a record-setting quarter. 

“The record business results drove our active installed base of devices to an all-time high in all of our geographic segments and all major product categories,” said Apple CFO Luca Maestri in a statement. “We grew EPS by 18 percent and generated operating cash flow of $16.3 billion during the quarter, a June quarter record for both metrics.”

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers: iPhone sales grew from $25.9 billion this time last year to just over $26.4 billion, thanks in part to the release of the iPhone SE and the lifting of some shelter-in-place orders, Cook said. iPads sales surged to $6.6 billion from just about $5 billion, and the company sold $7.1 billion worth of Macs — that’s an increase of around 20 percent. Apple’s computers are usually the products least prone to unusual sales spikes, and some believe this lift in revenue may be thanks to a shift to working away from traditional offices. (Or, maybe they just wanted those improved keyboards.) Wearables, meanwhile, hit $6.45 billion in revenue in this June quarter, a record for a non-holiday stretch.

While it’s easy to look at this quarter as a feather in Apple’s cap, investors and analysts are especially curious to see if the company offers any guidance about its performance next quarter. During Qualcomm’s post-earnings conference call the other day, the chipmaker noted that it expects much lower 5G devices sales in its September quarter because an unnamed customer was forced to delay a “global 5G handset launch.” Samsung is gearing up to launch a slew of new devices seemingly on schedule, and  Huawei — now the world’s biggest smartphone vendor — uses its own homemade Kirin chipsets. Apple seems to be the most likely party. 

Update: Apple CFO Luca Maestri confirmed during the company’s post-earnings conference call that its new iPhones will indeed be delayed by ‘a few weeks.’

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Alphabet saw its revenue dip due to the pandemic

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Though advertising money pretty much disappeared everywhere, Google still made money from its Cloud products. “Customers are choosing Google Cloud to either lower their costs by improving operating efficiency, or to drive innovation through digital transformation,” Pichai said. The shift to working from home also led to a growth in use of Google’s cloud services. The company saw a number of large customers come on to cloud, he said, pointing to “big telco deals and banking deals” and Deutsche Bank as a few examples.

Beyond advertising and Cloud revenue, Pichai said the company saw “good traction in areas such as YouTube subscriptions, Google Play and YouTube premium music and TV subscriptions performed well during the quarter.” App and game downloads are up 35 percent year over year, Pichai added. Clearly, people are continuing to use their phones and going to YouTube for entertainment as they remain at home.

Pichai also gave a shoutout to the hardware team, saying he was excited for new devices coming this fall. It’s been more than a year since Google launched its midrange Pixel 3a phone, and we’ve been waiting for the much-anticipated Pixel 4a for months. Today, the company teased that a device was coming soon by plastering its own social media channels with playful images.

Alphabet also saw money come in through its Other Bets division. That segment made $148 million this quarter, “primarily generated by Fiber and Verily,” according to Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat.

Looking forward, Porat said revenue had gradually improved during the quarter, but that “it’s premature to gauge the durability of recent trends.” Based on her estimates, though, Porat said there were modest improvements in July. “We remain optimistic about the underlying strength of our business,” she added.

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Amazon doubled its profits last quarter thanks to COVID-related demand

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Last quarter, Amazon saw a big uptick in sales as well, but overall profits were slightly dampened due to the $4 billion in COVID-related expenses. The fact that net income for Q2 was so high despite the increase in expenses shows just how much consumers used Amazon in the past few months. During the call, Amazon’s Brian Hall attributed much of this success to Prime members. He said that Prime members shop more often, and with larger basket sizes. They also make up a heavy component of the aforementioned online grocery sales. Prime Video viewership went up because of them as well — nearly double year-over-year.

“This was another highly unusual quarter,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “We’ve created over 175,000 new jobs since March and are in the process of bringing 125,000 of these employees into regular, full time positions. And third-party sales again grew faster this quarter than Amazon’s first-party sales.”

The last point is a nod towards Bezos’s recent testimony in the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, where he had to defend the company against antitrust accusations. Even though Bezos said that selling on Amazon is beneficial for third-party sellers, he couldn’t reassure the committee that the company hadn’t misused data from them in order to sell Amazon-branded products. When confronted with a Wall Street Journal report on the matter, Bezos said that he “can’t guarantee” that the policy that prohibits employees from using seller-specific data hadn’t been violated.

The company has also faced several accusations that it hasn’t prioritized the safety of its warehouse workers, which have allegedly led to COVID-related deaths. In response, Amazon said in the earnings release that it is planning on spending more money to ensure the safety of its employees, such as increased social distancing and new medical facilities. The company said it would spend $2 billion in COVID-related expenses in Q3. Amazon says that’s lower than what it spent in Q2 due to better cost efficiency.

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Netflix is reportedly working on an animated Splinter Cell series

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After a seven-year hiatus, Splinter Cell could soon make a comeback. Variety reports Netflix and series publisher Ubisoft are working on an animated adaption of the long-running stealth game series, with John Wick franchise co-creator Derek Kolstad on writing duties. Kolstad is also said to be an executive producer on the adaptation. Netflix has reportedly ordered a total of 16 episodes spread across two seasons. 

The original Splinter Cell came out in 2002. To date, the franchise has spawned six sequels and numerous tie-in novels. All seven games have stared Sam Fisher, a former Navy Seal who is recruited by the National Security Agency (NSA) to take on clandestine spy operations across the globe. Until 2013’s Blacklist, the most recent entry in the franchise, actor Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers, X-Men: First Class) voiced Fisher, giving the character his signature gravelly baritone voice. With Blacklist, developer Ubisoft Toronto gave a younger actor the role to take advantage of recent advancements in motion capture technology.   

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Sony will announce new audio gear on August 6th

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Sony just shared that it plans to unveil new devices during an upcoming live stream. The event will take place on August 6th at 11AM ET. That’s one day after Samsung is likely to announce the Galaxy Live Buds at its Note 20 event. “Something exciting is coming your way,” says the video. Based on the accompanying hashtag, #ListenWithSony, it’s probably fair to say we’ll see the company announce new audio products.   

At the very least, there’s a good chance we may see a new version of the company’s popular WH-1000XM3 headphones. Since Sony announced them back in 2018, they’ve consistently been one of the best pairs of wireless headphones you can buy. But they’re also far from perfect. A significant downside of the WH-1000XM3 is that you can’t have multiple Bluetooth devices connected to them simultaneously, and that’s something Sony could fix with an updated version of the headphones.



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