Over 829 mn cyber attacks blocked in Q4: Report

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Over 829 mn cyber attacks blocked in Q4: Report

More than 829 million cyber attacks were blocked during the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2022, globally, of which 59 percent of the websites were in India.

According to the application security company Indusface, the report mentioned a sharp rise in the intensity and frequency of DDoS and Bot attacks in Q4 compared to Q3.

“In this quarter, we saw almost 20 applications of a healthcare customer get targeted by DDoS attacks. We also saw a SaaS application hit with a 2TB attack. In both cases, the attacks were quickly thwarted with AI sending out anomaly alerts and a managed services team deploying surgical rules,” said Ashish Tandon Founder and CEO, of Indusface.

The report says that mid-market companies with revenues between $10 million to $1 billion have been subjected to 45 percent of the cyberattacks, and only 21 percent were large enterprises with over $1 billion in revenue.

Small businesses, on the other hand, accounted for 34 percent of attacks, implying that every business is vulnerable to such attacks.

However, the ability to create custom rules has stood out as a key enabler of cyber security.

On average, each enterprise deploys 48 custom rules, and 60 percent of all attacks were blocked using these custom rules, according to the report.

The report also highlights the increase in ‘virtual patching’ as a measure to protect applications at the Web Application Firewall level.

DDoS attacks affected 32 percent of all apps during the last 60 days of the observation period, said the report.

The top three segments vulnerable to the attacks were banking, insurance, and other finance companies, followed by IT services and manufacturing companies.

SaaS/IT products and Retail/e-commerce also have a decent representation of 9 percent each.

In terms of region, 59 percent of the websites were in India, with the remaining 23 percent in the US and Canada, the report added.

Jio True 5G services now available in Andhra Pradesh

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Jio True 5G services now available in Andhra Pradesh

Reliance Jio on Monday announced it has launched True 5G services in Andhra Pradesh. The 5G services were launched in Tirumala, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, and Guntur districts.

State IT Minister Gudivada Amarnath said that 5G services will bring transformational benefits to the people.

“Apart from their existing investment of Rs 26,000 crore, additionally Jio has invested over Rs 6,500 crore for deploying 5G network in Andhra Pradesh and this shows their immense commitment towards our state’s development,” the minister said.

By December 2023, Jio True 5G services will be made available in every town, taluka, mandalam, and the village of Andhra Pradesh, he added.

Jio demonstrated the benefits of 5G in the field of healthcare, through Jio Community Clinic medical kit, and the revolutionary AR-VR device, Jio Glass.

These benefits will bring phenomenal changes in the lives of people in Andhra Pradesh, according to the company.

State Chief Secretary Dr. K.S. Jawahar Reddy said that the launch of Jio’s True 5G services will open doors to growth opportunities in the areas of e-governance, education, healthcare, IT, and SME business.

A Jio spokesperson said that Jio True 5G network will expand across the length and breadth of the state within a short period of time.

80% of new smartphones will be 5G-enabled in India by 2023: ICEA

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80% of new smartphones will be 5G-enabled in India by 2023: ICEA

As India rides on 5G with more than 50 cities and towns now enjoying the new technology, the India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) Chairman Pankaj Mohindroo said on Monday that by the end of 2023, 75-80 per cent of the new smartphone launches will be 5G-enabled.

The 5G services were launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 1.

Telecom service providers have launched the service in select cities and plan to cover the entire nation by the end of 2023 or early 2024.

“India as a nation is an early adopter of 5G technology. This 5G technology has opened a vast opportunity for a new generation of telecom equipment manufacturers, application providers, and internet of things (IoT), machine-2-machine (M2M), and healthcare services, among others,” Mohindroo told IANS.

The mobile device ecosystem was an early starter for manufacturing 5G phones.

Even before the launch of 5G services, approximately 80-100 million 5G-compatible phones were already in the market.

5G will represent around 53 percent of mobile subscriptions in India by 2028, with 690 million users, according to ‘Ericsson Mobility Report’.

5G subscriptions in India were expected to reach around 31 million by the end of 2022.

In the semiconductor industry, Mohindroo said that the Indian semiconductor market was $15 billion in 2020 and expected to reach $63 billion by 2023 at a 30 percent CAGR.

“This is a huge opportunity for the nation. The government is very focused on setting up the entire semiconductor ecosystem in the country from semiconductor fab, compound semiconductors, discrete semiconductors, assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (ATMP) units, etc,” said Mohindroo.

The India Semiconductor Mission offers an incentive outlay of Rs 76,000 crore for the development of semiconductor ecosystem in India, offering fiscal support of 50 percent of the project cost.

“We feel that the next focus should be ensuring skilling of the workforce for the sector and incentivizing the downstream value chain in semiconductor manufacturing,” he said.

Twitter Blue users now get ‘prioritised rankings in conversations’

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Twitter Blue users now get ‘prioritised rankings in conversations’

Micro-blogging platform Twitter has updated the list of features for its Blue service, which mentioned that subscribers paying for the $8 per month service will now get “prioritized rankings in conversations.”

According to Twitter, this feature prioritizes subscribers’ replies to tweets that they interact with. Twitter CEO Elon Musk promised this feature in November and said that the subscribers would get, “Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeating spam/scam.”

Earlier this month, the micro-blogging platform repeated this promise and said, “soon, subscribers with the blue checkmark will get priority ranking in search, mentions, and replies to help lower the visibility of scams, spam, and bots.”

The updated page also mentioned that subscribers can now upload videos up to 60 minutes long from around the web at 1080p resolution and 2GB in file size, but also all videos must comply with the company’s rules.

Earlier, Twitter Blue subscribers were only able to upload 10-minute-long videos on the platform at 1080p resolution with a file size limit of 512MB.

YouTube inks $2 bn annual deal for NFL ‘Sunday Ticket’

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YouTube inks $2 bn annual deal for NFL ‘Sunday Ticket’

Google-owned YouTube has inked a $2 billion annual deal with the National Football League to acquire exclusive rights for the Sunday Ticket, a subscription-only package that allows football fans to watch most Sunday afternoon games.

The deal will run for seven years, reports the media, citing sources. Sunday Ticket will be available in two ways starting in 2023-24 — as an add-on package on YouTube TV and as an a la carte option on YouTube Primetime Channels, where users can subscribe to specific streaming services and channels and watch movies as well.

Later, consumers will be able to subscribe only to Sunday Ticket without having a YouTube TV subscription.

However, pricing hasn’t been determined for either option, said the report.

“For a number of years we have been focused on increased digital distribution of our games and this partnership is yet another example of us looking towards the future and building the next generation of NFL fans,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was quoted as saying.

Moreover, DirecTV (an American multichannel video programming distributor) has owned the rights to Sunday Ticket since its inception in 1994, paying $1.5 billion per year since its last renewal in 2014, according to the report.

Earlier this week, Apple backed out of a deal to secure the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket package.

According to Dylan Byers of Puck News, Apple backed out of the deal because it doesn’t “see the logic”, in closing the pricey football package.

There were reports earlier this year that Apple was close to a deal with the NFL chiefs, as Apple executive Eddy Cue spoke to them in meetings.

Twitter lays off more employees from public policy team

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Twitter lays off more employees from public policy team

Twitter has laid off more employees from its remaining public policy team, after laying off an unknown number of engineers in its infrastructure vertical last week.

A member of the Twitter public policy team tweeted late on Thursday that she has been laid off.

“Yesterday was my last day at Twitter, as half of the remaining Public Policy team was cut from the company. It’s hard to convey how fortunate I feel to have had this exceptional opportunity. This was, indeed, a dream job,” posted Theodora (Theo) Skeadas.

“I am unbelievably proud of the work we did to protect people in global conflicts including Iran, Ukraine, and Libya,” she added.

According to Musk, Twitter now has just over 2,000 employees (it had more than 7,500 employees when he took over in October.

Musk said in the latest live audio conversation platform Twitter Spaces that Twitter was on track to lose about $3 billion next year but should now be “roughly cash flow break-even” after his job cuts.

The company has been hit by at least 100 former employees of various legal violations, including gender discrimination in layoffs and failing to pay promised severance.

Twitter laid off around 3,700 employees in early November in the first cost-cutting measure. Hundreds more resigned later.

The company was also sued in the US for mass layoffs without giving employees advance written notice.

The lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court in the Northern District of California, in violation of worker protection laws, including the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act as well as the California WARN Act, both of which require 60 days of advance notice.

The lawsuit is seeking “a range of relief, including compensatory damages (including wages owed), as well as declaratory relief, pre-and post-judgment interest, plus other attorneys’ fees and costs”.

India’s first 5G-driven, AI-guided colonoscopy trial carried out

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India’s first 5G-driven, AI-guided colonoscopy trial carried out

Bharti Airtel with Apollo Hospitals on Thursday announced that they have carried out India’s first 5G-driven, Artificial Intelligence (AI) guided colonoscopy trial.

In this trial, Airtel’s 5G technology was used to detect colon cancer faster and more accurately by applying AI. This technology has ultra-low latency and high processing capabilities.

HealthNet Global, AWS, and Avesha are the other three companies that collaborated in this trial.

“Healthcare is one of the most promising use cases for 5G, and we are delighted to collaborate with Apollo Hospitals, AWS, HealthNet Global, and Avesha. This is just the beginning, and I am certain we will bring many more innovative use cases that will help redefine healthcare in the country,” Ajay Chitkara, CEO and Director, of Airtel Business, said in a statement.

The company mentioned that AI-assisted colonoscopy polyp detection trials will help doctors to improve the quality of patient care, and improve the accuracy of detection rates by capturing information correctly and reducing errors.

“By augmenting doctor’s ability to detect, AI has been proven to improve physician’s accuracy. Early detection and removal of polyps can easily avoid them from becoming cancerous. Apollo has always been a forerunner in the adoption of technology. Our patient-centric approach keeps us on an outlook for technologies which can make outcomes better,” Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group, said in a statement.

Through the use of 5G, Edge computing, and Artificial Intelligence, proper and timely diagnoses can be assisted, which can lead to improved patient outcomes.

Twitter’s ‘view counts for tweets’ feature starts showing up

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Twitter’s ‘view counts for tweets’ feature starts showing up

As promised by Twitter Boss Elon Musk, the “view counts for tweets” feature would be coming for all tweets, just like the view count shown for all videos has now started to show up for some Twitter users.

Some Twitter users have reported getting the feature, but it doesn’t seem to be available to everyone yet, reports The Verge.

On December 9, Musk tweeted about an update for the feature to arrive soon.

“Tweets will show view count in a few weeks, just like videos do. Twitter is much more alive than people think,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Twitter also rolled out a new feature that will let users search for listed company stocks and cryptocurrency prices.

In order to do this, users will have to type in the dollar symbol followed by the relevant ticker symbol, e.g. “$GOOG” or “$ETH” without the quotes, in the search bar on Twitter, according to TechCrunch.

This works without the $ symbol in some cases, but it’s less consistent and doesn’t always return the requested stock or cryptocurrency prices.

However, when it is operational, users will see a static image displaying stock price and a chart with no X or Y axis information, said the report.

NASA’s humanoid robot will help do laundry at home, explore space

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NASA’s humanoid robot will help do laundry at home, explore space

NASA is reportedly working on a project to develop a humanoid robot that will help humans travel to new celestial bodies and may even help with laundry at home.

Apptronik, a US-based robotics company, is collaborating with NASA to develop “Apollo”, a 5-foot 8-inch, 160-pound (about 72 kg) general-purpose humanoid robot designed to assist with tasks in space, the commercial sector, and, most interestingly, the home, reports ZDNET.

“You know, I’m ready for it. I’m tired of doing my dishes and laundry,” Jeff Cardenas, CEO of Apptronik was quoted as saying.

Apollo will be equipped to perform a variety of tasks in various environments, with the mission of carrying burdens that humans do not need or want to carry, said the report.

“The initial things that these robots are going to do our very sort of simple things, like move objects,” said Cardenas.

“Things that we’re exerting a lot of energy on, and I think what this will do is free humans up to do things that are much more worthy of our time, and our talent,” he added.

Apollo will make its first debut at South by Southwest in March 2023, according to the report.

South by Southwest is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in the US.

Apptronik will then spend the rest of the year working closely with select customers to deploy the robot and observe use cases, however, the wider rollout will not begin until 2024.

NASA and Apptronik first collaborated in 2013, when they built NASA’s Valkyrie Robot for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC).

Valkyrie was a multi-purpose humanoid robot that could have walked straight out of a sci-fi movie, the report added.

NASA finally bids goodbye to InSight Mars lander

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NASA finally bids goodbye to InSight Mars lander

The US space agency has finally retired the InSight Mars lander after more than four years of collecting unique science on the Red Planet.

Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy referred to as “dead bus”.

The agency said in a statement that it will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, just in case, but hearing from it at this point is considered unlikely.

The last time InSight communicated with Earth was on December 15.

“I watched the launch and landing of this mission, and while saying goodbye to a spacecraft is always sad, the fascinating science InSight conducted is cause for celebration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

“The seismic data alone from this Discovery Program mission offers tremendous insights not just into Mars but other rocky bodies, including Earth,” he added

InSight data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, the surprisingly strong remnants beneath the surface of its extinct magnetic dynamo, weather on this part of Mars, and lots of quake activity.

Its highly sensitive seismometer, along with daily monitoring performed by the French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Marsquake Service managed by ETH Zurich, detected 1,319 “marsquakes”, including quakes caused by meteoroid impacts, the largest of which unearthed boulder-size chunks of ice late last year.

Such impacts help scientists determine the age of the planet’s surface, and data from the seismometer provides scientists with a way to study the planet’s crust, mantle, and core.

“With InSight, seismology was the focus of a mission beyond Earth for the first time since the Apollo missions, when astronauts brought seismometers to the Moon,” said Philippe Lognonne of Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, principal investigator of InSight’s seismometer.

The seismometer was the last science instrument that remained powered on as dust accumulating on the lander’s solar panels gradually reduced its energy, a process that began before NASA extended the mission earlier this year.

“As a scientist who’s spent a career studying Mars, it’s been a thrill to see what the lander has achieved, thanks to an entire team of people across the globe who helped make this mission a success,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, which manages the mission.

Mars InSight lander on Tuesday posted its last image on Twitter.

“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me,” posted the InSight lander team.

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