Tag Archive for: TechCrunch

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.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

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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Hacker George Hotz, long a frenemy of Elon Musk, signs on for 12 weeks at Twitter • TechCrunch

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A lot has been made of Twitter’s shrinking workforce, which is reportedly at 2,300 people, down from the 7,500 employed by the company when new owner Elon Musk took control.

While we posited that the newest wave of departures was part of Musk’s master plan to shrink down the company, many worry about the haphazard ways it has been downsized. Insider reported on Friday, for example, that Twitter’s payroll department was decimated last week when employees who were given a stark ultimatum by Musk opted to bounce.

Still, Musk has plenty of supporters who want to help him improve Twitter, and he apparently just brought one into the fold on a short-term basis: George Hotz, the security hacker known for developing iOS jailbreaks and reverse engineering the PlayStation 3 before later founding Comma.ai, whose driver assistance system startup aims to bring Tesla Autopilot–like functionality to other cars.

Hotz definitely falls into the category of people-who-wouldn’t-be-on-your-remake-of-Twitter bingo board. Hotz founded Comma.ai after getting into a fight with Musk after Musk allegedly tried to hire him at Tesla but “kept changing the terms,” as Hotz told Bloomberg in 2015. At the time, Tesla said Hotz’s bold claims that his tech could beat that of Autopilot was “extremely unlikely.” Hotz promptly set out to prove Musk and the rest of Tesla wrong.

So why team up now? For one thing, Hotz has a little extra time on his hands. As TechCrunch reported early this month, Hotz considers that some of his own work at Comma.ai is done for the moment. It currently sells a $1,999 driver assistance system developer kit that is compatible on more than 200 vehicles; the company is also on solid ground as it looks to turn its devkit into a productized consumer product, he told TechCrunch.

The momentum gives him a little space to explore. “I’m good at things when it’s wartime,” Hotz told TechCrunch for that story. “I’m not so good at hands-on, ok, let’s patiently scale this up. ‘Do you want to deal with a supply chain that’s capable of making 100,000 devices a year?’ Like, not really.”

Hotz, now 33, may also want to again prove his mettle to Musk. Indeed, last…

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India’s Leading Central Securities Depository Says Malware Compromised Its Internal … – Latest Tweet by TechCrunch

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US charges Ukrainian national over alleged role in Raccoon Infostealer malware operation • TechCrunch

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U.S. officials have charged a Ukrainian national over his alleged role in the Raccoon Infostealer malware-as-a-service operation that infected millions of computers worldwide.

Mark Sokolovsky — also known online as “raccoonstealer,” according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday — is currently being held in the Netherlands while waiting to be extradited to the United States.

The U.S. Department of Justice accused Sokolovsky of being one of the “key administrators” of the Raccoon Infostealer, a form of Windows malware that steals passwords, credit card numbers, saved username and password combinations, and granular location data.

Raccoon Infostealer was leased to individuals for approximately $200 per month, the DOJ said, which was paid to the malware’s operators in cryptocurrency, typically Bitcoin. These individuals employed various tactics, such as COVID-19-themed phishing emails and malicious web pages, to install the malware onto the computers of unsuspecting victims. The malware then stole personal data from their computers, including login credentials, bank account details, cryptocurrency addresses, and other personal information, which were used to commit financial crimes or sold to others on cybercrime forums.

An example of one of the phishing emails sent by the crime group. Image Credits: U.S. Justice Department.

According to U.S. officials, the malware stole more than 50 million unique credentials and forms of identification from victims around the world since February 2019. These victims include a financial technology company based in Texas and an individual who had access to U.S. Army information systems, according to the unsealed indictment. Cybersecurity firm Group-IB said the malware may have been used to steal employee credentials during the recent Uber breach.

But the DOJ said it “does not believe it is in possession of all the data stolen by Raccoon Infostealer and continues to investigate.”

The Justice Department said it worked with European law enforcement to dismantle the IT infrastructure powering Raccoon Infostealer in March 2022, when Dutch authorities arrested Sokolovsky. According to one report, the malware…

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