In internet-fail news, it looks like streaming service Hulu, gaming service Xbox Live and self-described “front page of the internet” Reddit all experienced outages Wednesday afternoon. Down Detector recorded over 10,000 reports about Microsoft’s Xbox Live being down and another 10,000 reports of Hulu being down. The Xbox Live status page confirms that core services are “limited.” “Our …
Deep-learning techniques have made it easier and easier for anyone to forge convincing misinformation. But just how easy? Two researchers at Global Pulse, an initiative of the United Nations, decided to find out. In a new paper, they used only open-source tools and data to show how quickly they could get a fake UN speech …
Over the past two years conflict has escalated in North West and South West Cameroon. Cameroon is a bilingual country (English and French) and these two regions are the country’s English-speaking areas. The conflict started when lawyers and teachers held strikes over the increasing use of French in English courts and schools. Since then, what …
For more than two hours on Thursday, June 6, a large chunk of European mobile traffic was rerouted through the infrastructure of China Telecom, China’s third-largest telco and internet service provider (ISP). The incident occurred because of a BGP route leak at Swiss data center colocation company Safe Host, which accidentally leaked over 70,000 routes …
YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its popular service. The new policy will ban “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,” …
Two new gTLD applicants have notified ICANN that they no longer wish to run the .Brand domains, they join an ever growing list of applicants who are ditching their names. The Top-Level Concerned are: The .ISELECT new gTLD is run by a compnay which describes itself as Australia’s go-to destination for comparing and saving across …
Google’s decision to withhold its Android software from Huawei is being seen as the beginning of a technology cold war that could compel African countries – in the future – to choose between US and Chinese technology, analysts have told the BBC. Most Africans connecting to the internet today are likely to be using a …
Threat actors have started scanning the internet for Windows systems that are vulnerable to the BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708) vulnerability. This vulnerability impacts the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) service included in older versions of the Windows OS, such as XP, 7, Server 2003, and Server 2008. Microsoft released fixes for this vulnerability on May 14, as part …
Chip designer ARM has suspended business with Huawei, threatening the Chinese company’s ability to create its own chips. BBC News reports that ARM employees have been instructed to halt “all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements” with Huawei due to the US trade ban. The US has banned any US companies from doing …
Alan Barrett will be leaving his role as AFRINIC chief executive officer on 26 July 2019, the organisation has announced. “I have taken the difficult decision to leave AFRINIC, after four years as CEO. I have been both proud to serve the African community, and humble to realise how small my own contributions have been,” …