Tech Roundup: Monokle Spy Toolset, Uber Subscription Pass & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

1. The U.S. state of Louisiana declares an emergency following a series of ransomware attacks on three public school districts.
2. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the country's antitrust watchdog, unveils plan to launch the world's first office dedicated to scrutinising algorithms used by tech giants such as Facebook and Google in an attempt to bring more accountability and transparency.
3. Apple becomes the latest company after Amazon and Google to admit it's paying contractors to listen to recorded (and anonymised) Siri conversations with an intention to improve Siri and dictation, according to a new report from The Guardian, with a former contractor revealing that workers have heard accidental recordings of users' personal lives, including doctor’s appointments, addresses, and even possible drug deals. (Unlike Alexa or Google Assistant, there is no way to opt out, other than turning off Siri completely.)
4. Researchers from mobile security firm Lookout discover Monokle, a new set of Android surveillance tools originating from Russia; the Pegasus-like comprehensive spying toolset, purportedly developed by St. Petersburg-based private defense contractor Special Technology Centre (STC), possesses remote access trojan (RAT) functionality, uses advanced data exfiltration techniques and has the ability to install an attacker-specified certificate to the trusted certificates store on an infected device that would facilitate man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. (The toolset can read WhatsApp, VK, Skype, and Instagram messages, send text messages, record calls, take photos, videos, and screenshots, track device location, list installed applications, reboot a device, and uninstall itself and remove all traces from an infected phone.)
5. New Spearphone (acronym for Speech privacy exploit via accelerometer-sensed reverberations from smartphone loudspeakers) attack found to use the accelerometer in LG and Samsung Android phones to remotely eavesdrop on any audio that's played on speakerphone, including calls, music and voice assistant responses.
6. Uber starts testing a monthly subscription pass for US$ 24.99 that combines rides, Eats, bikes and scooters for riders in San Francisco and Chicago that includes a fixed discount on every ride, free Uber Eats delivery and free JUMP (bikes and scooters) rides.
7. Facebook fixes flaw in Facebook's Messenger Kids app that let kids invite a parent-approved user into a group chat even if that user wasn't authorised to chat with others in the group.
8. TikTok-parent ByteDance to set up a data centre in India to store Indian users' data locally, says its social app Helo has 50 million monthly active users and TikTok has 120 million monthly active users in the country, and acquires Jukedeck, a U.K.-based startup that makes AI-generated music, thus allowing it use more royalty-free tracks, thereby avoiding expensive licensing problems down the road.
9. US consumer credit reporting agency Equifax settles with Federal Trade Commission for a catastrophic security incident back in 2017 after its systems were breached through a critical security flaw (Apache Struts vulnerability CVE-2017-5638) between May and the end of July, resulting in the theft of 147 million U.S. citizens' records; company to shell out as much as $700 million to compensate affected consumers and settle with federal agencies and 50 U.S. states and territories.
10. Snapchat hits 203 million daily active users, adding 13 million daily active users to Snapchat this past quarter, the highest it's been since the company went public, as rival Twitter hits 139 million daily active users.
11. Netflix officially launches its US$ 3 per month mobile-only streaming subscription in India as it faces tough competition from rivals Amazon Prime and Disney's Hotstar.
12. Google Photos crosses billion active users four years since launch; releases a lightweight Gallery Go app designed for offline use. (Google Photos is the company's ninth product to reach the milestone, joining Android, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and, of course, Google search.)
13. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba opens its doors to US sellers on its oldest platform, alibaba.com; now offers tools to allow U.S. firms to sell on the business-to-business platform in the US and globally.
14. Facebook says more than 2.1 billion people now use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger every day on average, and by more than 2.7 billion people each month; reports 1.59 billion daily active users on Facebook.
15. Apple's App Store comes under fresh scrutiny after a Wall Street Journal analysis reveals that the company's own mobile apps are often first in App Store search results ahead of competitors; says it gives the company an "upper hand," as it pivots to services and subscriptions for growth, but Apple pushes back against the findings, saying it uses a combination of 42 factors — name matches, downloads, ratings, relevance, user behaviour — to determine where apps rank in search.
16. Facebook-owned WhatsApp — which has about 400 million active users in India — to roll out its payments service in the country this year, after developing a system that stores data locally to comply with Reserve Bank of India's policy; said to be building a desktop version that works without a phone. (India has about 450 million smartphone users.)
17. Google says overall Pixel unit sales in Q2 2019 doubled YoY, following the launch of the Pixel 3a in May; revenue from cloud business jumps to US$ 8 billion, up from US$ 4 billion the company reported in early 2018.
18. Amazon's advertising business earns US$ 3 billion in revenue, up 37 percent YoY, as the retail giant maintains its lead in the enterprise cloud business with revenues of US$ 8.4 billion.
19. Apple enters into a deal to acquire majority of chipmaker Intel's smartphone modem business (including intellectual property and acqui-hire of 2,200 Intel employees) for US$ 1 billion; development comes as Apple readies to manufacture its own 5G modems for its smartphones without having to rely on Qualcomm for hardware.
20. Chinese tech conglomerate Alibaba Group unveils its first self-developed chip, as companies move to seek self-sufficiency in the semiconductor industry amid the U.S.-China trade war; Xuantie 910 processor, developed by Alibaba's chip subsidiary Pingtouge, is based on open-source architecture called RISC-V, as opposed to the more commercially-used ARM architecture.
21. Ride-hailing service Uber reportedly talking to a number of the major supermarkets around Europe, including Sainsbury's in the U.K., about launching a grocery delivery service, according to Bloomberg.
22. Facebook to migrate Instant Games from the Messenger app on iOS to the Gaming tab in Facebook's main app starting later this summer; says the goal is to make Messenger a faster, lighter, and simpler app, with Instant Games a central experience on Facebook.