VICE: Iran Launched A Mobile App That Claimed To Diagnose Coronavirus

via David Gilbert, writing at Vice comes this outstanding piece on the despots running Iran into the ground. Literally.

'"Dear compatriots, before going to the hospital or health center, install and use this software to determine if you or your loved ones have been infected with the coronavirus,” said the message, which claimed to come from the Ministry of Health...' 'Of course, the app couldn't tell citizens if they had coronavirus. But what it could do is hoover up huge amounts of data on citizens, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and even track people's location in real time."' - via David Gilbert, writing at Vice

Google Confirms' Backdoor Is In Motion...

via Dan Goodin, reporting at Ars Technica, and focusing on recently discovered Android device backdoors. Apparently, said backdoors were installed at currently unidentified manufacturer's factories prior to sale (confirmed by Google Security Engineers). Bad news for Android users... Currently, Google, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) remediation plans are unclear.

Facebookery 2019: Zuckerbergs' Desperation

I suppose that's one way to do it, eh wot? 'Tis the latest brobdingnagian attempt to stay relevant in the coming world without Facebook (NYSE: FB) for young adults and teens.

Thanks to the Gulliver-level reportage of Josh Constine, writing at TechCrunch, we have now learned of what the company has monikered Project Atlas. Enjoy the future, it's on your kids phones, and they get paid to!

Action Taken to Curtail Portuguese Internetwork Firm Accused of Latest BGP Hijack

via Ronald F. Guilmette (writing on the NANOG Mailinmg List), in which, his evident disgust (shared I'm sure by the majority of network engineers reading the NANOG List), at BGP route hijacks executed allegedly by BitCanal - a Portuguese firm, at this point, held in the lowest regards. Read more on the Oracle+Dyn blog post well crafted by Doug Madory, or Ronald F. Guilmette's email on the NANOG List (a short snippet also follows).

"Sometimes I see stuff that just makes me shake my head in disbelief. Here is a good example:https://bgp.he.net/AS3266#_prefixes I mean seriously, WTF? As should be blatantly self-evident to pretty much everyone who has ever looked at any of the Internet's innumeriable prior incidents of very deliberately engineered IP space hijackings, all of the routes currently being announced by AS3266 (Bitcanal, Portugal) except for the ones in 213/8 are bloody obvious hijacks. (And to their credit, even Spamhaus has a couple of the U.S. legacy /16 blocks explicitly listed as such.)" - Ronald F. Guilmette at NANOG Mailing List Archive