Google’s outage impacted millions of Gmail users, suspected Russian hackers linked to breaches with the U.S. treasury, and you can now shoot photos RAW with Apple’s new update.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Tuesday, December 15, and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
====
Google was hit by a monumental outage yesterday affecting a majority” of the 1.5 billion users on Gmail and a range of services including YouTube, Gmail, Google Suite and Google Maps. Starting from around 6:30 am eastern time, the outage became global and lasted around 45 minutes. The cause was not known but it appears to be Google’s Authentication tool which relates to users’ accounts. Devices such as Home speakers and Nest, were also impacted. All services have now been restored.
====
U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources from technology
====
Some major updates surrounding the FireEye hack. Security teams whose organizations use SolarWinds’ Orion IT management platform are scrambling to perform damage control after reports surfaced Sunday saying recent security updates for the platform had been infected with malware. This led to numerous data breaches including last week’s hack of security vendor FireEye.Reuters is reporting that Russian hackers were caught monitoring internal email traffic in the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments. The spies are believed to have gotten access by leveraging the SolarWinds vulnerability. SolarWinds has contracts with government, military and intelligence services. The hack even lead to a National Security Council meeting at the Whitehouse this past weekend.
=====
For photography fans, Apples iOS 14.3 has arrived with ProRAW for iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max. The format will allow the computational benefits of Apple’s image processing with the post-processing flexibility of a RAW file. The update also includes support for Fitness Plus which is apples new subscription-based workout service, search improvements for the Apple TV app, and updates on the new Airpod Max headphones. [Twitter thread]
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Baneet Braich thanks for listening.
