 A database containing the stolen phone numbers of more than half a billion Facebook users is being freely traded online. A database containing the phone numbers of more than half a billion Facebook users is being freely traded online, and Facebook is trying to pin the blame on everyone but themselves. A blog post titled “The Facts on News Reports About Facebook Data,” published Tuesday evening, is designed to silence the growing criticism the company is facing for failing to protect the phone numbers and other personal information of 533 million users after a database containing that information was shared for free in low-level hacking forums over the weekend, as first reported by Business Insider. Facebook initially dismissed the reports as irrelevant, claiming the data was leaked years ago and so the fact it had all been collected into one uber database containing one in every 15 people on the planet—and was now being given away for free—didn’t really matter. Facebook has become accustomed to dealing with multiple massive privacy breaches in recent years, and data belonging to hundreds of millions of its users has been leaked or stolen by hackers. But, instead of owning up to its latest failure to protect user data, Facebook is pulling from a familiar playbook: just like it did during the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, it’s attempting to reframe the security failure as merely a breach of its terms of service. So instead of apologizing for failing to keep users’ data secure, Facebook’s product management director Mike Clark began his blog post by making a semantic point about how the data was leaked. “It is important to understand that malicious actors obtained this data not through hacking our systems but by scraping it from our platform prior to September 2019,” Clark wrote. This is the identical excuse given in 2018, when it was revealed that Facebook had given Cambridge Analytica the data of 87 million users without their permission, for use in political ads. Clark goes on to explain that the people who collected this data—sorry, “scraped” this data—did so by using a feature designed to help new users find their friends on the platform. “This feature was designed to help people easily find their friends to connect with on our services using their contact lists,” Clark explains. The contact importer feature allowed new users to upload their contact lists and match those numbers against the numbers stored on people’s profiles. But like most of Facebook’s best features, the company left it wide open to abuse by hackers. “Effectively, the attacker created an address book with every phone number on the planet and then asked Facebook if his ’friends’ are on Facebook,” security expert Mikko Hypponen explained in a tweet. Clark’s blog post doesn’t say when the “scraping” took place or how many times the vulnerability was exploited, just that Facebook fixed the issue in August 2019. Clark also failed to mention that Facebook was informed of this vulnerability way back in 2017, when Inti De Ceukelaire, an ethical hacker from Belgium, disclosed the problem to the company. Facebook has been collecting users’ phone numbers for a decade, initially claiming that it was part of the platform’s security protocols. But in reality, Facebook was simply using that data to help it sell more ads and target more users — a breach of users’ trust that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) decided was worth a $5 billion fine in 2019. But for users whose phone numbers were being traded freely online, possibly the most aggravating part of Clark’s post is when he puts the onus on users to protect the data that Facebook itself required users to hand over in the name of “security.” “While we addressed the issue identified in 2019, it’s always good for everyone to make sure that their settings align with what they want to be sharing publicly,” Clark wrote. “In this case, updating the ‘How People Find and Contact You’ control could be helpful. We also recommend people do regular privacy checkups to make sure that their settings are in the right place, including who can see certain information on their profile and enabling two-factor authentication.” It’s an audacious move for a company worth over $300 billion, with $61 billion cash on hand, to ask its users to secure their own information, especially considering how byzantine and complex the company’s settings menus can be. Thankfully for the half a billion Facebook users who’ve been impacted by the breach, there’s a more practical way to get help. Troy Hunt, a cybersecurity consultant and founder of Have I Been Pwned has uploaded the entire leaked database to his website that allows anyone to check whether their phone number is listed in the leaked database. While Facebook is attempting to downplay the seriousness of the leak, the decision about how serious this is does not lie with the company alone. In Ireland, the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC)—which has the power to levy a fine of up to 4% of global turnover or around $3.5 billion—has slammed the company for failing to inform it of the breach.Turn to OUR FORUM to learn more.  Auto manufacturers and other companies are hoping that the global chip shortage will end soon, but snarled semiconductor supply chains may not untangle until next year. The mess began when the pandemic upended the market for semiconductors. As demand for cars plummeted, automakers slashed their orders. But at the same time, demand for chips that power laptops and data centers skyrocketed. That bifurcation shifted the market, and when car and truck sales rebounded, semiconductor manufacturers rushed to meet demand. Soon, though, shortages of key components emerged. The industry is known for planning—and for its long lead times—so it could take a while for the chip market to sort itself out. “There seems to be a broad consensus that it will stabilize by the end of the year,” Chris Richard, principal in Deloitte’s supply chain and network operations practice, told Ars. “But if I go back to 2008 and the financial crisis, it was a couple years after the rebound started before everything smoothed out again.” It’s not just manufacturing capacity that’s hard to come by. Shortages of wafers and packaging substrates are compounding the problem. Those have hit the automotive sector especially hard, Richard added. A drought in Taiwan and a fire at a Japanese fab threaten to add to the industry’s woes. Many of the chips in shortest supply, including those destined for the automotive sector, are made using older processes. These mature nodes are typically well understood, and many fabs run them near the limits of their capacity, meaning there’s not a lot of slack in the system. In other industries, shortages like this can be solved more easily—customers can simply place orders with other manufacturers to meet temporary spikes in demand. But automakers are unlikely to dial up a new supplier, since it takes about three to six months, sometimes more, to qualify chips from a new factory. And semiconductor manufacturers are unlikely to build new fabs to meet what might prove to be temporary surges in demand. In the end, the best bet for both sides is to push for more production at existing fabs. Chip manufacturers have responded by ramping up production on their existing lines where they can, but that’s difficult in fabs that are already running above 90 percent capacity. To free up more production, they’re trying to tweak production rates on existing machines, request early deliveries for tools they’ve already ordered, and squeeze more of those tools into space-constrained factories. “It’s just a big scramble,” Richard said. For many car companies, chip problems have been made worse by the fact that the companies are often several steps removed from semiconductor manufacturers. Over the years, as cars have incorporated more advanced technologies, automakers have outsourced the production of more and more parts to suppliers. That distant relationship stands in sharp contrast with computer and electronics companies, which often work directly with semiconductor companies. Together, they command about 60 to 70 percent of the chip market, while automotive customers account for less than 10 percent. The current chip crisis and the trend toward electrification are factors likely to change how car companies interact with semiconductor manufacturers. While today’s fossil fuel-powered vehicles use plenty of chips, electric vehicles promise to use more, especially as advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS, become more widespread in the coming years. The coincidence of the chip shortage and electrification will change how auto executives view their relationship with semiconductor manufacturers, Richard said. Automakers will likely work much more closely with chip companies in the future, even if the resulting car parts are made by several different suppliers.For more navigate to OUR FORUM.  Cyberpunk 2077 is an Early Access game. It wasn't labeled that way at launch, but it should have been (and while it may not have sold quite so many copies, it probably would have cut down on the outrage from players at the state of it). Cyberpunk 2077 was far from finished when CDPR pushed it out the door a couple of years too early, and despite a massive patch released earlier this week that made a number of improvements, it's still far from finished today. Cyberpunk 2077's 1.2 patch, released earlier this week, weighs in at 33GB and includes nearly 500 fixes for the PC version of the game. That's a hefty patch, and it contains tons of important fixes for quests, gameplay systems, and the many, many, many bugs Cyberpunk 2077 shipped with. Despite the surprisingly long list of fixes and tweaks, the experience post-patch is ultimately about the same. After playing a couple of hours with the 1.2 patches, I can't say I really noticed much of a difference. Yes, the patch made it so cops and police drones spawn a bit further away when you commit a crime, but that doesn't really make their response feel any less ridiculous, especially when you're in a remote area with hardly anyone around and can see them blip into the world. And despite the swarms of teleporting police, they're still incredibly easy to evade because they give up the moment you're out of sight and never jump into cars to pursue you. Post-patch, I still get the bug where I'm suddenly thrown hundreds of meters away from the spot I was standing. I still regularly see NPCs floating in the air. I still see those ridiculous 2D cars that are supposed to simulate traffic at a distance, and I still see them in places where there's no need to simulate traffic at a distance. I still can't get the second part of the vending machine quest to kick off, despite the quest marker pointing me to the spot I need to go to kick it off. I don't have any mod conflicts, either—this is a completely clean install of the patched game. It's just still heavily broken. The first thing I did after installing the patch was run to the spot outside V's apartment, where on day one I witnessed cars repeatedly and hilariously smashing into a barricade on the sidewalk. They're still doing that. There are fewer cars on the road now, which makes it less noticeable, but every car that does go down that road still smashes immediately into that barrier and sends hunks-o-car flying through the air. It's still funny to me, but it demonstrates just how much more there is to fix. (Though at least now V sleeps on their bed like an actual human being would.) Some players are having an easier time post-patch, reporting that driving is much improved on PC using the keyboard now that there's a steering sensitivity slider. Some say performance has improved as well, with more consistent fps and quicker load times. Naturally, as happens on PC with patches for just about every game ever made, other players are reporting a worse experience. More crashes, lower fps, and new quest bugs in place of old ones. The subreddit is still packed with glitch gifs, as it has been since day one. I do think Cyberpunk 2077 is still worth playing, both when it launched and right now. There are lots of great characters and some really interesting quests. It looks amazing and it's a beautiful world (if a rarely rewarding one) to explore. Yes, the glitches and bugs and half-assed systems like police responders can grating and frustrating, but the goofy physics bugs can be amusing, too, and at times the characters and story are engaging enough that even distracting bugs don't completely ruin them. Learn more by visiting OUR FORUM.
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