ASIC impersonated in “largest-scale” Australian malware outbreak in past year”: MailGuard
The emails, purporting to be from ASIC, tell businesses their name is due for renewal and directs them to a link to download a renewal notice.
This link actually contains attachments for a .zip archive file which contains a malicious JavaScript file. MailGuard said the exact type of malware isn’t clear yet, but its purpose is to disrupt, damage or gain control of the victim’s system.
MailGuard said there were a few things to watch out for from the email. It was sent from the domain ASIC.Transaction.No-reply@asickdesk.com which was registered in China yesterday.
The subject line is ‘Renewal’ and emails are addressed to ‘Dear customer’ rather than a specific recipient.
What makes the email more deceptive is that includes a “well-formatted message” that uses ASIC’s branding and the government’s coat of arms.
This is the fourth time this year a widespread email scam impersonating the corporate watchdog has targeted Australian businesses.
In 2017, email scams have also impersonated MYOB in two separate incidents, energy provider Origin and human services body myGov.
Tesla to build giant battery in South Australia in 100 days or it’s free
Elon Musk, known for his bold approach to cars, clean energy and space exploration, trumped dozens of competing proposals to build the gigantic lithium-ion battery that will serve as emergency back-up power for South Australia
Tesla must deliver the 100MW battery within 100 days of the contract being signed or it will be free, a commitment Musk made in a tweet in March.
Musk said failing to deliver the project in time would cost his company “$50 million or more”, without elaborating.
It will be the largest lithium-ion battery storage project in the world, overtaking an 80 megawatt-hour facility in California, also built using Tesla batteries.
Perhaps the biggest risk is any perception that the 129 MWh Tesla battery to be linked to the Hornsdale wind farm is capable of replacing a shortfall in renewable power when the wind stops for an extended period of time, as it has frequently done over the past several months. The battery is not designed to do that.
But if everything goes according to plan, the battery will be able to surge rapidly to life when demand peaks and prices spike in the wholesale market.
A battery will be able to respond to the market quicker than other backups, including gas.
But it is a sprinter not a stayer so the hope is it will last just long enough for back-up to come into play at a more realistic price than is occurring now.
The most recent literature review undertaken by the Swedish government found it would take eight years of driving to recover the CO2 used to make the batteries for electric cara. Similar Chinese research says battery cars take 30 per cent more CO2 to produce than conventional cars.
Gangnam Style is no longer the most-played video on YouTube
Gangham,style video became so popular that it “broke” YouTube’s play counter, exceeding the maximum possible number of views (2,147,483,647), and forcing the company to rewrite its code.
But the song has now been overtaken by another music video – Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s See You Again. has now been streamed 2,895,373,709 times
If one person was to listen to each of those streams consecutively, they’d have to have started during the glacial peak of the last Ice Age. Adding it up, that means See You Again has been streamed for a total of 21,759 years.
47 of the top 50 clips on YouTube are music videos
According to analysis by Midia Research, every stream on YouTube generates $0.001 for the music industry.
that means Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s song has earned $2.9m (£2.2m) from YouTube – roughly the same amount it has made from 665 million plays on Spotify.
| Most-watched music videos on YouTube | ||
| Artist | Song | Views (at time of writing) |
| 1) Wiz Khalifa | See You Again (ft Charlie Puth) | 2,895,373,709 |
| 2) Psy | Gangnam Style | 2,894,426,475 |
| 3) Justin Bieber | Sorry | 2,635,572,161 |
| 4) Mark Ronson | Uptown Funk (ft Bruno Mars) | 2,550,545,717 |
| 5) Luis Fonsi | Despacito (ft Daddy Yankee) | 2,482,502,747 |
| 6) Taylor Swift | Shake It Off | 2,248,761,095 |
| 7) Enrique Iglesias | Bailando | 2,232,756,228 |
| 8) Maroon 5 | Sugar | 2,150,365,635 |
| 9) Katy Perry | Roar | 2,129,400,973 |
| 10) Taylor Swift | Blank Space | 2,101,607,657 |
President Trump sued for blocking people on Twitter
The lawsuit was filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute, a free speech group at Columbia University.
The seven Twitter users involved claim their accounts were blocked by the president, or his aides, after they replied to his tweets with mocking or critical comments.
People on Twitter are unable to see or respond to tweets from accounts that block them.
The legal complaint argues that by blocking these individuals, Mr Trump has barred them from joining the online conversation.
It calls the move an attempt to “suppress dissent” in a public forum – and a violation of their First Amendment right to free speech.
Last month, Mr Spicer (press secretary) said Mr Trump’s tweets were considered “official statements by the president of the United States”
“The First Amendment applies to this digital forum in the same way it applies to town halls and open school board meetings,” he said.
“The White House acts unlawfully when it excludes people from this forum simply because they’ve disagreed with the president.”
- Republican political strategist Cheryl Jacobus filed a $4m libel lawsuit against the president-to-be in 2016, claiming he had “destroyed her career” by calling her “a dummy” on Twitter. The suit was thrown out by a New York judge, who ruled that the slur did not qualify as defamatory.
Sharing firm loses most of its 300,000 umbrellas
A Chinese firm that allowed people to rent umbrellas via an app has said thousands of them have gone missing.
Sharing E Umbrella had left 300,000 brollies in public places in 11 cities, including Shanghai and Nanjing.
Customers pay a 19-yuan (£2.15) deposit to unlock the umbrellas after scanning a code with their smartphone.
Every half hour of use costs a further half yuan, though users must top up in order to keep being charged.
Each brolly costs the firm 60 yuan to replace, but it is undeterred – 30 million new umbrellas will be introduced to the scheme, it has said.
haring E Umbrella plans to rely mainly on profits from adverts, some of which may be printed on the umbrellas themselves.
NSW government backs $35 million startup hub for Sydney
The hub will be funded by Jobs for NSW. Stone and Chalk, Fishburners, Tank Stream Labs and The Studio have already signed on to take space in the 11-floor, 17,000 square metre hub, which will be located in York Street in Sydney’s CBD.
When Sydney Startup Hub opens it will be in a central location to help both local and international entrepreneurs flourish.
“More than 40 per cent of the nation’s start-ups are in NSW already
open in late 2017 and early 2018. The organisation said that there will be KPIs for hub residents.
Residents that don’t meet their KPIs for two consecutive years may be asked to leave the hub.
Jobs for NSW will invest $35 million over five years in the hub
NBN’s copper bill hits $177.1 million
NBN has revealed that as of 20 June, the company has purchased $177.1 million worth of copper materials. Said it wasn’t being used to fix up existing copper.
NBN’s most recent corporat2e plan estimates that some 51 per cent of connections on the National Broadband Network will be likely to employ some length of copper.
Copper is used for fibre to the node (FTTN), fibre to the building/basement (FTTB), and fibre to the distribution point (generally described by NBN as fibre to the curb or FTTC).
FTTN connections, an average of 450 metres of copper is used to connect a home to a node. (Two-thirds of end-users are within 400 metres of the node used to connect them to the network