Most of the cybersecurity problems in ex-Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko’s 84-page whistleblower complaint aren’t unique to Twitter — but a handful of claims are worrisome enough to catch regulators' and competitors' attention.
The big picture: Only a handful of specific nightmare scenarios in the complaint will end up having staying power as Washington responds to Zatko's claims.
The growth of text-based phishing scams hit close to home for Axios last week when several employees got fake text messages claiming to be from company president and co-founder Roy Schwartz.
The big picture: We dug into the recent campaign targeting Axios employees to learn more about how these scams operate — especially as reports about text message scams continue to outpace reports about email scams this year for the first time, per the Federal Trade Commission.
Attacks on companies and sites dip in the summer months, researchers have repeatedly found, and the reason isn't hard to decode: Hackers take summer vacations, too.
The big picture: Cybercriminals love to flaunt their cash and take lavish vacations after successful hacks and online scams — giving U.S. law enforcement a ripe opportunity to arrest or extradite them, experts tell Axios.
Survivor.io is mobile gaming’s latest out-of-nowhere success, topping iOS and Android charts throughout August. It got there with an eyebrow-raising gameplay concept and popular ads on TikTok.
Why it matters: Mobile is the game industry's biggest market, but chart-topping hits are often big surprises that call for some sleuthing about how they blew up.
Austin's Jenna Palek is breaking out the boots to mark one year of her Fun on Weekdays brand.
Driving the news: Palek, a social media influencer, will host a "country disco carnival" Friday at Star Hill Ranch in Bee Cave, promising a night of mechanical bull riding, a hair tinsel bar, live country music, line dancing and more.
The browsers built into popular apps like Facebook and Twitter provide convenience for users looking to read a page — but also open them to broad privacy and security risks, as recent reports have highlighted.
The big picture: In-app browsers allow mobile users to follow links and read web pages without having to switch out of the app they're using. But it's difficult to audit who ends up with the data trails this browser activity creates — and that personal information could end up in the hands of the app maker.
The annual Burning Man bacchanal in the Nevada desert returns Sunday after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus — this time with a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers conducting a science experiment with implications for online social networks.
Why it matters: The arrival of about 80,000 whimsically costumed revelers at a makeshift encampment called Black Rock City marks some sort of reassuring-yet-ironic return to normalcy.
SpaceX and T-Mobile are partnering to bring wireless phone service to remote areas with spotty coverage.
Driving the news: T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced the collaboration Thursday at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas, claiming the service will roll out next year and work with existing phones.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) refused Donald Trump's application for a trademark for "Truth Social," the name of his social media company earlier this month. A trademark lawyer in Washington surfaced the filing on Thursday.
Why it matters: The trademark refusal is just the latest setback for the former president's social media app and its parent company, which have been beset by a raft of issues over the past few months.
Google Maps and Search will start clearly labeling results for healthcare facilities that provide abortions, the company announced Thursday.
Why it matters: When users browse Google Search or Maps, they will be able to more clearly tell which facilities provide abortions and which may be a crisis pregnancy center or another place that does not provide abortion.
It's probably the end of the line for another algorithmic stablecoin, fei. Either way, it is almost certainly the end of the road for the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that runs it, TribeDAO.
Why it matters: Crypto projects seldom completely disappear, but we're watching a DAO unwind itself in real time right now as the creators of the project propose a plan to break it up. This could end up being something of a historic moment in decentralized finance, as founders pioneer a shutdown.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 is getting a surprise price hike in most of the world due to difficult global economic conditions, the company has announced.
Driving the news: The price for both models – with the disc drive and without –will increase in Europe, the U.K., Japan, Canada and other regions, but not in the U.S.
Box CEO Aaron Levie says his company is seeing strong business, even as his customers struggle to deal with inflation, supply-chain challenges and an uncertain path back to traditional office life.
"Every enterprise on the planet is dealing with some mix of macroeconomic or business-specific challenges," Levie told Axios in an interview following the company's quarterly earnings report Wednesday.
Network infrastructure giant Cloudflare faces pressure from activists to stop providing services to a nearly decade-old website where anonymous users organize the harassment and "doxing" of trans people, in some cases with the goal of driving them to suicide.
The big picture: Many technology providers prefer not to stand as judge of their own customers' behavior or content, but the Trump-era rise of the far right has repeatedly forced Cloudflare and others companies into that position.
Billionaire Marc Lore is fleshing out his plan to build a utopian city called Telosa for 5 million people in the American desert — and he's not the only one with such ambitions.
Why it matters: There are about a dozen projects worldwide to create sustainable, hypermodern cities-from-scratch. While they may never come to fruition, the proposals themselves hint at what the city of the future might look like.
