Here are a few of the tech news stories that caught my attention over the weekend.
Canada Revenue Agency Shuts Down “My Account” After Thousands of Accounts Compromised
The Canada Revenue Agency has temporarily shut down its “My Account” portal after it has been confirmed that over 11,000 accounts had been compromised. This comes after weeks of reporting of people claiming that their direct deposit information was changing without their knowledge, and that they were getting emails stating they had signed up for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit when they had not done so.
This sounds super scary, but it is important to note that the CRA itself has not been hacked. The CRA is saying that the accounts being compromised are ones where the user has reused the same username and password across several online accounts, and those credentials are compromised, and used to log into CRA My Account. So, if my Twitter username is abc123 and my Twitter password is 123abc (they aren’t), and I used that same username and password for CRA My Account, if my Twitter username and password are compromised, someone could use that to log in to CRA My Account.
This is a very, very important reminder to never re-use passwords, especially on the most sensitive accounts like banking and tax information.
As of this writing, it is unclear how long CRA My Account will be inaccessible, and what will happen to those who need to use that service to access COVID-19 related benefits.
Epic Games Says Apple Will Terminate its Apple Developer Account if it Doesn’t Change Fortnite
In a significant, but expected, escalation of Epic Games’ battle with Apple over in app purchases in Fortnite, Epic Games has shared a letter Apple sent the company stating that they need to remove the option to do direct billing in Fortnite within two weeks or Apple will terminate their Developer Program account. As a reminder, Apple removed Fortnite form the App Store, however existing installs continue to work, but cannot be updated. So the change that allowed in app purchases to occur without going through Apple remains in the current installs of the game on iOS and iPad OS.
Terminating this acocund would prevent Epic Games from distributing apps on the App Store, even those unrelated to Fortnite. I twould also affect the company’s apps on MacOS, as Apple requires apps be signed to run on newer versions of the operating system. This could not only affect it’s consumer apps and games like Fortnite, but also the Unreal Engine developer tools, which are used to build and develop thousands of games.
Epic Games has petitioned a US court for an injunction preventing Apple from terminating this Developer account.
I will have more of my thoughts on this entire situation tomorrow.
Huawei Temporary License Expires, Leaving Millions of Phones in an Uncertain State
On Friday, a temporary license granted by the US government that allowed US based companies to continue to working with Huawei in limited fashion, mostly around software, expired. This temporary license allowed the company to continue working on the software on the tens of millions of existing devices it had sold before President Donald Trump placed the company on the “Entity List.”
The biggest, high profile result of this is that Huawei will no longer be able to issue Android updates to existing devices, and software vendors like Google may no longer be able to update apps on those phones either.
This could have a significant impact on these phones, rendering them nearly impossible to use within a few weeks, if app and system updates that are required are not able to be used on those devices.
It should be noted that this is being done on national security grounds, with the Trump Administration believing that Huawei networking equipment has a back door allowing the Chinese government to take over the devices. Independent security experts say that no such back door exists, and in fact the only company that has ever been found to include a “back door” into a product is Cisco, a US company.
Intel Shows Off Next Generation Integrated Graphics
Intel is showing off a first look at the graphics processors that will be included in it’s 11th generation Tiger Lake processors. This graphics processor, named Xe, appears to offer a significant leap over the previous graphics included in Intel processors. Xe graphics in laptops will not be replacing high end options from nVidia or AMD any time soon, but will offer a nice boost, especially in 4k playback efficiency. These will be competent parts that will keep the x86 laptop market moving forward, and improvements are always welcome.
Google Pixel 4a Review
Lastly, I want to highlight a review on the Google Pixel 4a. This one is similar to many of the other reviews on the market. The Pixel 4a is near universally agreed to be the best android phone you can buy on a budget today. It offers a good experience and a very good camera at a reasonable price. If spending $1000 or more on a phone is not something that interests you, but you want something just a little bie more than the crowded segment in the $300 range, The Pixel 4a at $480 is probably the phone you should be looking at.