SpaceX Starlink opens up new orders and “hackers” tamper with Florida water. We discuss these stories and much more in this week’s Rundown.
Intel Sues Ex-Employee for Stolen USB
Intel is not happy with a former employee. They alleged in court this week that before Dr. Varun Gupta left the company in January 2020 he plugged in a removable USB stick and copied 3,900 files to it. He also copied files to a portable USB hard drive, with some of the files being marked “Top Secret” and “Confidential”. Investigators working with Microsoft, Dr. Gupta’s new employer, were able to determine he accessed the files during the course of his employment there. Intel is seeking damages of $75,000 plus legal fees. Dr. Gupta denies all of the allegations.
SentinelOne, a top cybersecurity platform, announced yesterday that they will be acquiring Scalyr, a cloud-scale data analytics company. The deal is valued at $155 million and would see the high-speed logging capabilities of Scalyr integrated into SentinelOne that helps sort data and provide analysis for threats in your environment.
UK Rules Data in RAM is Storage
Here’s a fun one! British prosecutors made a ruling this week that data kept in the RAM of a server counts as storage for legal purposes. At the center of the dispute is EncroChat, an encrypted messaging service. The laws in the UK are different than those in the US and a number of cases hinged on whether or not the data in RAM was in transit or being stored when it was intercepted by police in the raids. The counterargument of the messages being in transit meant that they couldn’t be used against those clients in court cases.
DOJ Drops Net Neutrality Suit Against California
The US Department of Justice announced this week that it will be dropping a lawsuit against a California law aimed at protecting net neutrality. The law, passed in 2018, was a direct response to the repeal of neutrality regulations by the FCC in 2017. The DOJ filed the lawsuit claiming that the FCC order superseded the state law, which sought to prevent providers from throttling service or introducing paid “fast lanes” to certain traffic types. The lawsuit isn’t the only one preventing the law from going into affect, but this a sign that the current political climate supports a change to the FCC rules of the past four years.
VMware Partners with Cloudian and MinIO for Container Storage
VMware has released Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.2, which adds data persistence for S3-compatible object storage thanks to partners Cloudian and MinIO. With S3 becoming the de facto protocol for cloud object storage, these companies add a powerful capability to VMware clouds.
SpaceX Starlink Opens Up New Orders
If you want your networking to come straight from space you’re in luck. The next round of preorders for Starlink from SpaceX just opened up. All you need to do is put down a $99 depostin and wait for your address to be available in the service area. As noted previously on the Rundown the hardware will cost you $499 and the service itself is $99/month. Speeds are reportedly around 30-60 Mbps with decent latency and coverage in rural areas helping to bolster adoption. The latest round of services will be rolling out in the coming months as Starlink adds capacity to increase the number of customers it can support. Starlink has also been adding capacity in the polar regions with laser connectivity between satellites to help speed transmission over sparsely populated areas.
“Hackers” Tamper with Florida Water Supply
Evidently you shouldn’t drink the water in Oldsmar, FL. This week there was a report that a hacker had infiltrated the water treatment facility there and attempted to change the levels of sodium hydroxide that were added to the water to purify it. The levels, normally at 100 parts per million, were increased to 11,100 parts per million in front of a treatment facility worker. The worker quickly changed the levels back to normal and reported the breach. Investigations are ongoing at this time but evidence is pointing to a copy of popular remote access program TeamViewer being installed on the machine.
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