Tag Archive for: rival

The year’s best apps, Twitter rival Hive’s security woes, App Store backlash grows • TechCrunch

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

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Twitter, Spotify, Meta and Coinbase all bash Apple’s App Store

Elon Musk wasn’t happy with Apple this week. The new Twitter exec claimed Apple threatened to remove the app from the App Store — which was not likely true. Instead of taking on the claims directly and starting a Twitter fight, Apple CEO Tim Cook invited Musk to Apple’s campus, where they took a walk and resolved their differences. Or at least that’s how Musk put it, referring to the potential Twitter ban as a “misunderstanding.”

“Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so,” said Musk regarding Twitter’s potential App Store removal.

That’s not to say Apple wouldn’t ever ban Twitter one day if it found itself so unmoderated that it was allowing unchecked hate speech or stoking violence. It once took action against Parler, and Twitter could see App Store policy enforcement if it devolved as well.

The Musk-Apple drama stirred others to tweet their App Store issues, too.

Spotify…

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Rival Information Security Companies Fight Over Use of Similar Brand Names and Logos

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Red Siege, LLC v. Red Sentry, LLC, Civil Action No. 1:22-cv-04661-LMM (N.D. Ga., Nov. 22, 2022)

Competing information security companies dispute the right to use the name Red Siege and Red Sentry for computer security consultancies. Red Siege, LLC, claims to have been continuously and exclusively using its registered mark in connection with computer consultancy services since at least 2017. The mark is used in commerce on its website, at security trade shows, and conferences. Red Sentry, LLC, has been using the allegedly infringing mark since 2021, when the company changed its name from “Offensive AI Holdings, LLC” to its current name.

According to the complaint, Red Sentry is a direct competitor purporting to sell identical services and causing confusion in the market. The complaint sites at least one third party who asserted at a trade convention that he believed the two companies were affiliated. Red Siege further contends that the Defendant was aware of the pre-existing mark yet purposefully assumed the name to compete, confuse, and trade off the goodwill and success of the original name-holder. As such, Red Siege alleges willful infringement and seeks damages, injunctive relief, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

While Red Siege and Red Sentry battle to use their brand names, domain names, and logos, one wonders whether Red Hat, Inc., which registered its mark in 2000 for similar fields, may decide to enter the fray.

Update: On November 30, Judge May denied Plaintiff Red Siege’s motion for an ex parte temporary restraining order (TRO), giving the Defendant Red Sentry an opportunity to appear and be heard on the merits of the case. A hearing for the Preliminary Injunction is set for December 19.

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NSO surveillance rival operating in EU

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The European Union has begun to wake up to the threat posed by an out-of-control surveillance industry, with Israel’s notorious NSO Group and its Pegasus spyware in its crosshairs.

As European Parliament hearings into hacking scandals resume this week, an investigation led by collaborative newsroom Lighthouse Reports alongside EUobserver, Der Spiegel, Domani and Irpimedia reveals the unreported scale of operations at a shady European surveillance outfit, whose tools are in use all over the world, including in countries with a recent history of corruption and human rights violations.

  • The exterior of the Rome HQ (Photo: Lighthouse Reports)

Tykelab, a little-known company based in Italy, and its owner RCS Lab are quietly selling powerful surveillance tech inside and outside the EU, boasting that it can “track the movements of almost anybody who carries a mobile phone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent”.

The new investigation, based on confidential telecom data and industry sources, found the companies employing a range of tracking and hacking tools — including surreptitious phone network attacks and sophisticated spyware which gives full remote access to a mobile device — against targets in southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as inside Europe.

MEPs, telecom specialists and privacy experts have reacted with dismay to the revelations, describing them as a danger to rights and security, and calling on governments and industry to do more to regulate Europe’s spy firms.

“This is a story of a large spyware vendor abusing the rule of law, this time based within Europe,” MEP Sophie In ‘t Veld said. “It is high time that the entire spyware industry within the EU, which acts in a sort of twilight zone of legality, is regulated and sees the light of day. Limits have to be set, otherwise our democracy is broken.”

Edin Omanovic, advocacy director of the NGO Privacy International, said: “The threat posed by the mercenary spyware industry must now be clear to Brussels and European capitals: they need to take decisive action to protect networks, stop this trade and sanction companies complicit in abuses, as the US has already done.”

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Google’s Chrome Is Under Heavy Attack—This Startup Thinks It Has A Rival To Save Businesses From Disaster

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Browsers are proving to be a potential Achilles’ heel in computer and smartphone security. This year has seen a record number of so called zero-day attacks in the wild, where unpatched weaknesses in software are exploited by hackers, and Google Chrome has seen at least 12 so far this year.

In Covid and post-pandemic times, as workers use their personal devices for work, or their work ones for personal use, the danger of being hacked via Chrome or whatever browser they use has become considerably more real. Enter Talon Cyber Security, an Israeli startup that’s already claimed the largest seed round in its country’s history with $26 million in April this year. Coming out of stealth with its first product on Wednesday, it has created a browser, TalonWork, based on the same Chromium base code that Chrome uses, but with a promise to do a better job than rivals at protecting the more distributed, often home-based workforce of the post-Covid era.

The company claims its browser, which can be deployed across a customer’s organization in less than an hour, is “hardened” from zero-day attacks as Talon’s servers detect attempted attacks. It also isolates work-related browsing activity from any malware on the device. And, via a management console, businesses can apply their own policies across their employees’ browsers and get data on what workers are doing on the web, though only when it’s linked to work, Talon cofounder and CEO Ofer Ben-Noon tells Forbes. “IT can see, monitor and control everything work related.” Companies can choose how they want to split personal and work use.

Talon claims ten customers and design partners are already using the browser, though it isn’t revealing any names.

The company claims its product is a first of its kind, though others have sold secure browsers into the enterprise market before. Google, for instance, has its own enterprise-focused version of Chrome that offers many of the same support and control features Talon is…

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