Huawei Mate 30 series confirmed to launch on September 19

Confirming previous rumours, Huawei has announced the launch date of its upcoming Mate 30 series. The Huawei Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro are set to launch on September 19 in Munich. Recently, Huawei’s 90-day extension period to conduct business with US firms ended, and Google has officially said that Huawei won’t be allowed to use the company's Android OS, services and popular apps like Google Maps on the upcoming Huawei Mate 30 series. 

Huawei took to Twitter to announce the launch date of the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro. The company is urging consumers to “rethink possibilities” - hinting at an Android substitute on the Mate 30 series. The teaser suggests a circular rear camera setup, which was also seen on alleged leaked promo image of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro is expected to sport the same quad rear camera setup that is used on the P30 Pro. The P30 Pro features a 40MP primary sensor that has an f/1.6 aperture lens. In contrast, a previous report suggests that the Huawei Mate 30 Pro could feature two custom-made 40MP cameras on the back, instead of just one. The handset is most likely to use the company’s patented RYYB pixel layout. 

The Mate 30 series is tipped to be powered by the unannounced Kirin 990 processor, which is touted to be better in terms of power efficiency. Additionally, Huawei Consumer Business Software, Dr Wang Chenglu, has reportedly said that the upcoming Mate 30 lineup might not come pre-installed with Google Play Services. The company might use its home-grown HarmonyOS, which can apparently be used on a wide range of devices including TVs, smartphones, wearables, and more. 

Additionally, the Mate 30 series is said to ship with 25W wireless charging support, which is even higher than the 15W wireless fast charging that is currently available on Samsung’s latest Note flagship.

Did you get it right? The countdown to #HuaweiMate30 starts now! We're going full circle in Munich on 19.09.2019. Join us live: https://ift.tt/2HzV8y3 pic.twitter.com/etRYjrBVEC

— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) September 1, 2019

 

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Police hijack a botnet and remotely kill 850,000 malware infections

In a rare feat, French police have hijacked and neutralized a massive cryptocurrency mining botnet controlling close to a million infected computers.

The notorious Retadup malware infects computers and starts mining cryptocurrency by sapping power from a computer’s processor. Although the malware was used to generate money, the malware operators easily could have run other malicious code, like spyware or ransomware. The malware also has wormable properties, allowing it to spread from computer to computer.

Since its first appearance, the cryptocurrency mining malware has spread across the world, including the U.S., Russia, and Central and South America.

According to a blog post announcing the bust, security firm Avast confirmed the operation was successful.

The security firm got involved after it discovered a design flaw in the malware’s command and control server. That flaw, if properly exploited, would have “allowed us to remove the malware from its victims’ computers” without pushing any code to victims’ computers, the researchers said.

The exploit would have dismantled the operation, but the researchers lacked the legal authority to push ahead. Because most of the malware’s infrastructure was located in France, Avast contacted French police. After receiving the go-ahead from prosecutors in July, the police went ahead with the operation to take control of the server and disinfect affected computers.

The French police called the botnet “one of the largest networks” of hijacked computers in the world.

The operation worked by secretly obtaining a snapshot of the malware’s command and control server with cooperation from its web host. The researchers said they had to work carefully as to not be noticed by the malware operators, fearing the malware operators could retaliate.

“The malware authors were mostly distributing cryptocurrency miners, making for a very good passive income,” the security company said. “But if they realized that we were about to take down Retadup in its entirety, they might’ve pushed ransomware to hundreds of thousands of computers while trying to milk their malware for some last profits.”

With a copy of the malicious command and control server in hand, the researchers built their own replica, which disinfected victim computers instead of causing infections.

“[The police] replaced the malicious [command and control] server with a prepared disinfection server that made connected instances of Retadup self-destruct,” said Avast in a blog post. “In the very first second of its activity, several thousand bots connected to it in order to fetch commands from the server. The disinfection server responded to them and disinfected them, abusing the protocol design flaw.”

In doing so, the company was able to stop the malware from operating and remove the malicious code to over 850,000 infected computers.

Jean-Dominique Nollet, head of the French police’s cyber unit, said the malware operators generated several million euros worth of cryptocurrency.

Remotely shutting down a malware botnet is a rare achievement — but difficult to carry out.

Several years ago the U.S. government revoked Rule 41, which now allows judges to issue search and seizure warrants outside of their jurisdiction. Many saw the move as an effort by the FBI to conduct remote hacking operations without being hindered by the locality of a judge’s jurisdiction. Critics argued it would set a dangerous precedent to hack into countless number of computers on a single warrant from a friendly judge.

Since then the amended rule has been used to dismantle at least one major malware operation, the so-called Joanap botnet, linked to hackers working for the North Korean regime.

The sinkhole that saved the internet

Week in Review: Apple makes a rare apology, Nintendo tries to reinvent its invention

Hey. This is Week-in-Review, where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged on TechCrunch this week to surface my favorites for your reading pleasure.

Last week, I talked about Google’s Android naming switch-up.

---

The big story

Like clockwork, sources have been revealing to publications that Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant and Facebook M aren’t just digital assistants, they are portals into the AI workflows of Silicon Valley. Oh, and “AI workflows” means lots of contractors putting in quite a bit of manual work to understand what we want when we ask them questions.

This week, Apple announced that it’s completely changing how it handles reviewing audio from user Siri requests to ensure that users know exactly what they’re getting into privacy-wise.

The big change is that third-party contractors won’t have access to any of the clips for a process called “grading” and there is an explicit opt-in process for users. The company also gave a pretty explicit apology, which is pretty rare for an entity that seems to think its MacBook keyboards are still completely fine.

This whole situation is important for a couple reasons. One, Apple really sets the tone for consumer privacy among the tech giants so making notable changes here is positive and might push others to make similar updates. Two, Apple has the worst consumer-facing digital assistant. Like, Siri is just unquestionably worse than Alexa and Google Assistant so they arguably have the most to lose here and this is a decision that means less data for the company to hone its tech on.

Together, all of these gaffes really weren’t egregious, they were dealing with data that wasn’t nominally connected to users, but audio files should definitely be treated with a little more respect than anonymous crash reports. The journalism from publications like The Guardian pushing on “common” industry practices seemed to surface some positive change here.

Apple is turning Siri audio clip review off by default and bringing it in house

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on Twitter @lucasmtny or email
lucas@techcrunch.com

On to the rest of the week’s news.

Trends of the week

Here are a few big news items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context:

• Nintendo’s portable gets more portable
  The Nintendo Switch has been a huge success for the company, but in a new hardware update, the giant is doubling down on portability and simplicity in what might be a bid to capture some of the market it’s left behind from the DS line. Read more about it here.
• Former Google engineer gets indicted
  Autonomous tech guru Anthony Levandowski who was as the center of the contentious Waymo-Uber lawsuit is back in the spotlight after he was handed a federal indictment with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets. Read more here.
• Apple’s next hardware event is on its way
  The company just sent out invites to reporters for its iPhone event this month. Read more here.
• Jack gets hacked
  Twitter like to dream about its impact and influence in ways that feel less realistic to the average user scrolling through spam and insults, but CEO Jack Dorsey got a taste of the seedy underbelly of the site when his Twitter account was hacked Friday and bomb threats and racial slurs were sent out. Read more here.

GAFA Gaffes

How did the top tech companies screw up this week? This clearly needs its own section, in order of badness:

1. YouTube’s conspiracy theory devolution:
   [YouTube to reduce conspiracy theory recommendations]
2. Facebook brings in some long overdue political advertising oversight:
   [Facebook will require political advertisers provide further credentials or have their ads paused]

Photo by Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Extra Crunch

Our premium subscription service had another week of interesting deep dives. We published a roadmap for entrepreneurs looking to leverage Amazon and other ad platforms to create a direct-to-consumer startup.

How to use Amazon and advertising to build your D2C startup

“…This article focuses on customer acquisition, particularly Amazon and online advertising, for the direct-to-consumer (D2C) CPG venture. Selling on Amazon, specifically third-party (3P), has become an increasingly important component of the D2C playbook. About 46% of product searches start on Amazon, which makes it a compelling source of sales even for early-stage ventures….” (Extra Crunch membership required.)

Here are some of our other top reads this week for premium subscribers. This week, we published some analysis on the latest VMware deal and also looked at how startups should integrate customer success solutions early-on.

• How Pivotal got bailed out by fellow Dell family member VMware (Extra Crunch membership required.)
• Customer success isn’t an add-on, start early to win later (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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