Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
Elon Musk finally owns Twitter, but is the social media giant circling the drain or about to become something entirely new? Should Medibank pay the ransom to keep customers’ sensitive medical data safe? I was on this week’s Vertical Hold: Behind The Tech News and this is an updated version.
Continue reading “The 9pm Extra: Vertical Hold episode 403, “Has Elon Musk sunk Twitter? Should Medibank pay its cyber-ransom?””
This week’s big-ticket items are public service reform, the new post-Optus telco regulations, robodebt and a bunch of audit-related activities.
Continue reading “Digital developments from Canberra 9”
It’s still an attack even if the defences were useless. It’s still a crime even if it were easy to commit. Optus may have been a target ripe for the taking, and may well have been negligent, but the hackers are still the baddies here.
Continue reading “Yes of course Optus suffered a “cyber attack”, just one which looks like it was trivial to accomplish”
I was planning to skip this week, but the fallout from the Optus data breach means there’s a few things worth mentioning. There’s also a quantum thing… or is there?
Continue reading “Digital developments from Canberra 8”
As the world, and in particular the UK, emerges from the period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, regular service is resumed — by which I mean the usual mix of the stupid and the bizarre.
[Update: This episode was edited on 25 September 2022 to reflect developments across the weekend in the Optus data breach story. If you’re after just that update, scroll in to 55m02s.]
Continue reading “UPDATED: The 9pm Trickle-Down Containers of Hackers and Grief”
Apparently South Australia had an #optuswrongtime incident today, when some customers’ devices showed the wrong time, causing chaos for them.
The same sort of thing happened in Queensland in January — that’s when the hashtag was invented — and just like then, the official explanation was less than forthcoming.
An overnight maintenance upgrade of our 4G Plus mobile network caused some Optus customers’ devices in South Australia and the Northern Territory to switch to a different time zone earlier this morning. The Optus 3G network was unaffected.
Optus technicians resolved the issue with a fix that set clocks to the correct time zone.
Customers were also able to resolve the issue in a number of ways, including:
- Turning flight mode on and off
- Turning automatic clock settings off and on
- Turning their device off and on.
We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience.
I spoke about the incident this afternoon on ABC 891 Adelaide with Sonya Feldhoff.
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The audio is ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.