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Amazon cuts business ties with Israeli spyware maker NSO Group following allegations of widespread hacking

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Amazon has pulled the plug on infrastructure and other services that it offered to Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group, following allegations that the company’s spyware was being used to snoop on journalists and activists.

The tech and retail giant announced on Monday that it had deactivated cloud computing accounts linked to NSO Group. The Israeli company reportedly used Amazon Web Services (AWS) to operate the spyware programs that it marketed to governments around the world. The move comes after Amnesty International’s Security Lab conducted a forensic analysis of telephones on a leaked list of targets for NSO’s flagship malware, Pegasus. It’s believed that the digital surveillance software – which is reportedly capable of accessing and recording texts, videos, photos and web activity, and can even log passwords used on the device – may have been used by foreign governments to target as many as 50,000 people, including business executives, religious figures, academics, NGO workers, presidents and prime ministers.

The leaked list of purported Pegasus targets goes back to 2016 and was reportedly compiled from requests from NSO clients in 10 countries, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Hungary and Morocco have denied using the spyware to snoop on targets at home or abroad.

With media outlets now teasing potentially explosive details about the far-reaching hacking, Amazon wasted little time in distancing itself from the Israeli firm.

“When we learned of this activity, we acted quickly to shut down the relevant infrastructure and accounts,” an AWS spokesperson said.

NSO Group disputed that AWS had shut down its accounts, prompting Amazon to double down.

“We shut down the infrastructure referenced in this report that was confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity, in accordance with our terms of use,” a spokesperson for the company reiterated.

Amnesty’s analysis of 67 smartphones allegedly targeted by Pegasus found evidence of successful infection on 23 devices and signs of attempted infiltration on 14 others. The NGO also claimed that NSO’s malware sent information “to a service fronted by Amazon CloudFront, suggesting NSO Group has switched to using AWS services in recent months.”

Citizen Lab, a group at Toronto University that has been tracking Pegasus for years, said in a peer review of Amnesty’s finding that it had “independently observed NSO Group begin to make extensive use of Amazon services including CloudFront in 2021.”

CloudFront is an Amazon service that allows clients to securely deliver data using high transfer speeds.

While Amazon rushed to cut ties with NSO, it was less proactive when media reports revealed in May 2020 that the Israeli firm may have used Amazon infrastructure to deliver malware to unsuspecting victims. At the time, the company failed to respond to a request for comment asking if NSO had breached Amazon’s terms of service.

The Israeli surveillance firm has disputed how Pegasus has been characterized by Amnesty and subsequent media reports, claiming that its clients only use the malware in exceptional cases involving legitimate targets of counterterrorism operations or investigations of other serious crimes.

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TECHNOLOGY

How much YouTube pays for 1 million views, according to creators

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  • YouTube creators earn money from Google-placed ads on their videos.
  • A number of factors determine how much money they make, including video views.
  • Creators said how much YouTube pays for 1 million views ranged from $3,400 to $30,000.

While many factors — content niche and country, among them — determine how much money a YouTuber earns on any particular video, the number of views it gets is perhaps the most significant.

When a YouTube video hits 1 million views, there’s almost a guaranteed big payday for its creator. In some cases, creators can make five-figures from a single video if it accrues that many views.

Three creators explained how much money YouTube had paid them. YouTube pays $3,400 to $30,000 for 1 million views, these creators said.

When tech creator Shelby Church spoke with Insider, she had earned $30,000 from a video about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). At the time, the video had accrued 1.8 million views.

Her RPM rate — or earnings per 1,000 views — are relatively high, she said, because of her content niche. Business, personal finance, and technology channels tend to earn more per view.

“YouTubers don’t always make a ton of money, and it really depends on what kind of videos you’re making,” she said.

Influencers can earn 55% of a video’s ad revenue if they are part of YouTube’s Partner Program, or YPP. To qualify for the program, they must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their long-form videos.

They can also make money from shorts, YouTube’s short-form video offering. In order to qualify, creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers. YouTube pools ad revenue from shorts and pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing. Creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.

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Tesla employees shared sensitive images recorded by cars – Reuters

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Some pictures were turned into memes and distributed through internal chats, former workers told the agency

Tesla workers shared “highly invasive” images and videos recorded by customers’ electric cars, making fun of them on internal chat groups, several former employees of Elon Musk’s company have told Reuters.

The electric-car manufacturer obtains consent from its clients to collect data from vehicles in order to improve its self-driving technology. However, the company assures owners that the whole system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy,” the agency pointed out in its report on Thursday.

According to nine former workers who talked to the agency, groups of employees shared private footage of customers in Tesla’s internal one-on-one chats between 2019 and 2022.

One of the clips in question captured a man approaching his electric car while he was completely naked, one of the sources said.

Tesla recalls over 360,000 cars over self-driving threat

Others featured crashes and road-rage incidents. One particular video of a Tesla hitting a child on a bike in a residential area spread around the company’s office in San Mateo, California “like wildfire,” an ex-employee claimed.

“I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected… We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” another former worker told the agency.

Seven former employees also told Reuters that the software they used at work allowed them to see the location where the photo or video was made, despite Tesla assuring its customers that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.”

The agency noted that it could not obtain any of the pictures or clips described by its sources, who said they were all deleted. Some former employees also told the journalists that they had only seen private data being shared for legitimate purposes, such as seeking assistance for colleagues. Tesla did not respond when approached for comment on the issue by Reuters.

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Nordic nation’s military bans use of TikTok – media

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Sweden’s Defense Ministry has reportedly barred employees from using the Chinese-owned app on their work phones

Sweden’s military has reportedly cracked down on TikTok, decreeing that staff members are no longer allowed to use the Chinese-owned video-sharing application on their devices at work because of security concerns.

The Swedish Defense Ministry on Monday issued its decision, which was viewed by Agence-France Presse, banning the use of TikTok. Security concerns were raised based on “the reporting that has emerged through open sources regarding how the app handles user information and the actions of the owner company, ByteDance,” the ministry said.

The move follows similar restrictions imposed by other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, France banned government employees from downloading “recreational applications,” including TikTok, on their work phones. Norway barred use of the app on devices that can access its parliament’s computer network, while the UK and Belgium banned it on all government phones. Denmark’s Defense Ministry and Latvia’s Foreign Ministry imposed their TikTok bans earlier this month.

China responds to TikTok allegations

“Using mobile phones and tablets can in itself be a security risk, so therefore we don’t want TikTok on our work equipment,” Swedish Defense Ministry press secretary Guna Graufeldt told AFP.

The US, Canada and New Zealand previously banned their federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing fears of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of Congress may try to ban the app from the US market altogether after testimony at a congressional hearing last week by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew failed to ease their security concerns. “They’ve actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America,” US Representative Mike Gallagher said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.

Chinese officials have denied claims that TikTok is used to collect the personal data of its American users. “The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters last week. She added that Washington has attacked TikTok without providing any evidence that it threatens US security.

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