COVIDSafe app to get overhaul to capture all close contacts

• Testing by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) on behalf of the federal health department has shown 100 per cent performance, scoring “excellent” in all operating modes.
• Local iOS developer Quentin Zervaas points out in a passionate twitter thread: 
• In order to achieve “Excellent” for 2 locked iPhones (or as they claim, “100%”), there needs to be a third person nearby with an Android phone running COVIDSafe to facilitate key exchange.
• The app will be posted to github, for full transparency
• The new contract tracing API is available now to look at on Github, as it is made by VMware. The API is called Herald 
• Continues Zervaas: “This is the system the NHS abandoned because it worked nowhere near as well as the Google Apple framework
• He’s linked to a BBC article showing why Herald was rejected by the NHS:
• Contact-tracing app: First version worked on more phones

Black Friday online shopping comes in $9B, $3.6B on smartphones

• Adobe, which is following online sales in real-time at 80 of the top 100 retailers in the U.S. said US consumers spent $9 billion online on Black Friday
• That’s up 21.6% on a year ago. Adobe had originally forecast sales of between $8.9 billion and $9.6 billion.
• Cyber Monday - today - is expected to be bigger again 
• No local numbers yet, but so far I’ve resisted the bargain hunt

Telstra set to pay AU$50m for unconscionable sales to 108 Indigenous Australians

• Telstra has copped a $50m fine from the ACCC for unfairly targeting indigenous Australians with post paid phone contracts
• Staff in five Telstra licensed stores manipulated credit assessments, such as saying the customers were employed, to sign them up. 
• Once the debts were accumulated, Telstra then referred a portion of them to debt collectors.
• The average debt was $7,400 per customer
• According to the ACCC chair Rod Sims said.
•  "Many of the consumers spoke English as a second or third language, had difficulties understanding Telstra's written contracts, and many were unemployed and relied on government benefits or pensions as the primary source of their limited income. Some lived in remote areas where Telstra provided the only mobile network."
• "This case exposes extremely serious conduct which exploited social, language, literacy, and cultural vulnerabilities of these Indigenous consumers," 

Raspberry Pi Used To Hack Tesla Model X SUV Key Fob

• In a story that Elon Musk fans will take with grace and good humour, Tesla’s key fob has been defeated with a $40 Raspberry Pi 
• According to this Tom's Hardware story, a Belgian PhD student managed to wrest full control of a Tesla Model X SUV, by way of hijacking the Bluetooth keyfob and reprogramming it, using a Raspberry Pi.
• Tesla has since issued a software update to protect against that kind of attack
• Since the attack is done via Bluetooth, control could be gained wirelessly from 5 meters away.
• According to the article this is the third time the same student "has...
  

  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.