From the “this is real shady” department comes reports like this one that appear to bring to light Google’s Team Pixel program. Here’s how the program works:
A company or PR representative reaches out to you because you have an audience; they want to market and grow hype around their new phone/product (in this case, the Pixel 9 series); you need new, shiny things for your channel, so you bite their hand off, and a box of shiny new toys wings its way to your home or studio.
But then reality sets in, the reality of how the B2C reviews machine really works. In order to get early access to these phones, and future phones, you must adhere to an agreement.
And what does that agreement stipulate?
Simple: you have to be positive about the product or else you’re off the team, no more new, free Pixel phones for you. With this kind of threat, of course, most will bend the knee. But some haven’t and some have even outed #teampixel on X, shout-out to Mark’s Tech.
The Mark’s Tech is this guy who posted this to Twitter:
And this:
Now to be clear, this is being done by a PR company named 1000Heads. So there is the chance that Google was not even aware that this was going on. Though I seriously doubt that based on this:
I think this is called damage control.
Let me comment on this from the perspective of someone who does reviews. First of all I make it very clear here that I say what I want. And if a company doesn’t like that, fine. Go someplace else. I’m cool with that. Now the people from manufacturers and PR firms that I’ve dealt with over the years have never pulled a stunt like this on me. But at the same time, I go out of my way to avoid being put in a position where I might be incentivized to say nice things about a product. Because that’s simply not fair to my readership. That’s likely meant that the readership of this blog hasn’t grown as fast as it could have if I were less ethical. But I’m fine with that as I can sleep at night.
Any company that does anything as shady as this needs to be called out and held accountable. Because the products a company makes should sell the most and be the best because they are the best and people in the business of reviewing products agree of their own free will and not because they were incentivized to say nice things. Anything else is just wrong.
Russian Hacking Group Targets iOS & Android Devices Says Google
Posted in Commentary with tags Google on September 4, 2024 by itnerdThere have been reports that recent exploit attacks on iOS and Android web browsers by Russian hacking group APT29, have been detected by Google:
The Google TAG report, authored by Clement Lecigne, and published on August 29, revealed that the exploits being deployed by the Russian state-sponsored APT29 hacking group were the same as those used by commercial spyware vendors in the past.
Observed by the Google and Mandiant security analysts between November 2023 and July 2024, the exploits formed part of what is known as a watering hole attack. This is pretty much what you would expect it to be: a cyberattack targeting victims by infecting a website or service that they would ordinarily use and trust. Just like predators who attack their prey by hiding near real watering holes for thirsty animals at their most vulnerable. “The use of watering hole attacks circumvents traditional web security controls like URL categorization filters,” Adam Maruyama, field chief technology officer at Garrison Technology said, “because the owner of the site and the human-readable content hosted there are legitimate, leaving only a few layers of protection between the end user’s device and the malicious webcode.” The threat becoming even more acute on mobile devices, Maruyama continued, “where few users have endpoint protection products to stop even known exploits, leaving unpatched devices vulnerable.”
The prey in these particular attacks were Mongolian government websites, although the same tactic would apply to any targeted victim. State-sponsored groups such as APT29 tend to go for big game, as it were, being commercial and government organizations that benefit their paymasters most. The common denominator was that the victims were using the Safari browser on older versions of iOS (those before 16.6.1) initially and then Android users running the m121 to m123 versions of the Chrome browser. It should be noted that fixes had already been made available for the vulnerabilities exploited in these attacks, but users who were using unpatched versions were at risk.
Alan Bavosa, VP of Security Products at Appdome had this comment:
“While the APT29 group attack is focused on mobile browsers, the real targets ultimately are the Android and iOS apps running on unprotected end-user devices. To counter such threats, comprehensive mobile app protection is vital. App developers need to protect their apps and mobile end users from these and other attacks, using basic mobile app security protections as well as protections against new, sophisticated attacks, such as accessibility malware and social engineering attacks.”
“The nature of today’s mobile attack landscape means that it is difficult, if not impossible, for mobile end users to protect themselves.”
“Consumers are holding mobile brands accountable for mobile app defense. In order for mobile developers to keep up, they must implement automated mobile app defense systems to combat today’s increasingly sophisticated cyber threats rather than using SDKs or protecting their apps from scratch.”
This is a wakeup call for consumers and brands on how vulnerable the little rectangles we carry around with us everywhere we go really are. Thus updates need to be issued and applied and app companies need to make sure that their apps are secure.
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