We’re starting to understand the mysterious surge of hepatitis in children

These cases are severe—around 5% of the children infected worldwide have needed liver transplants, and 22 have died. And the cause of the outbreak has been something of a mystery. These children don’t have the viruses that usually cause the disease. Early on, the most obvious suspects were SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind covid-19, and adenovirus, […]

Global shortage of fiber optic cable threatens digital growth

Getty Images reader comments 18 with 15 posters participating Share this story A worldwide shortage of fiber-optic cable has driven up prices and lengthened lead times, endangering companies’ ambitious plans to roll out state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure. Europe, India, and China are among the regions most affected by the crunch, with prices for fiber rising by […]

The Download: monkeypox detection in wastewater, and China’s tycoon control

The news: Last month, Stanford’s Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network, or SCAN, added monkeypox to the suite of viruses it checks wastewater for daily. Since then, the virus has been detected in 10 of the 11 sewer systems that SCAN tests, including those in Sacramento, Palo Alto, and several other cities in California’s Bay Area. Why […]

ITP News in Brief July 25th

Victoria MacLennan. 25 July 2022, 11:11 pm I had a CSAC meeting today – Cybersecurity Advisory Committee – so it’s very topical the chapter highlighted this week (below) is also on Cyber Security. We live in increasingly complex times defending individuals, businesses – and actually our nation – from well resourced, coordinated and increasingly effective […]

Monkeypox is in Bay Area wastewater

Recent data suggest that the DNA of monkeypox can also be detected in a variety of bodily fluids from those infected. That includes respiratory and nasal secretions, spit, urine, feces, and semen—meaning a flushed tissue from someone with monkeypox can register the virus in wastewater. If a pathogen’s genetic footprint can persist in wastewater for […]

Hardcoded password in Confluence app has been leaked on Twitter

Getty Images reader comments 16 with 11 posters participating Share this story What’s worse than a widely used Internet-connected enterprise app with a hardcoded password? Try said enterprise app after the hardcoded password has been leaked to the world. Atlassian on Wednesday revealed three critical product vulnerabilities, including CVE-2022-26138 stemming from a hardcoded password in […]

The Download: dodging China’s porn ban, and a crypto fraud first

1 The US has charged people in the first crypto insider trading caseA former product manager at Coinbase, his brother, and their friend, are accused of wire fraud. (NBC)+ That’s bad news for Coinbase. (Quartz)+ Investors are still doing crypto deals—they’re just raising the bar for who gets funding. (The Information $)+ Extreme heat in Texas is stirring opposition to energy-guzzling […]

Griffin on Tech: A software sector stalwart steps back

Peter Griffin, Editor. 22 July 2022, 1:16 pm When I started covering the New Zealand tech sector over 20 years ago, it was an industry trying to deal with the fallout of the Dotcom bubble bursting. The NZX was littered with penny dreadful tech companies (Advantage Group, E-cademy, IT Capital) that had raised millions with […]

Zero-day used to infect Chrome users could pose threat to Edge and Safari users, too

reader comments 15 with 13 posters participating Share this story A secretive seller of cyberattack software recently exploited a previously unknown Chrome vulnerability and two other zero-days in campaigns that covertly infected journalists and other targets with sophisticated spyware, security researchers said. CVE-2022-2294, as the vulnerability is tracked, stems from memory corruption flaws in Web […]

Chinese gamers are using a Steam wallpaper app to get porn past the censors

Online porn is banned in China, so people there have to get creative to access it. Steam is one of the only popular global platforms still available in the country, and its community features, international high-speed servers, and increasingly hands-off approach when it comes to sexual content have made it an inevitable choice. Chinese users […]