Australia investigating five social media giants for not enforcing ban on kids

public sector

PLUS: Qualcomm tweaks datacenter chips for China; Japan's Air Force stretches into space; WiseTechs' woes mutiply; and more!

Australia’s government has decided to double the fines it can levy companies that don’t take appropriate steps to enforce the country’s ban on children under 16 accessing social media – and said Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube are under investigation for possible non-compliance.

The decision to increase fines came after publication of a study that found around 80 percent of kids in Australia continue to use social media despite the ban, mostly because age verification tech hasn’t blocked their accounts.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday announced the increased fines, saying that while social media companies have deactivated or restricted access to five million accounts since the ban came into force last December. The PM thinks that’s a decent start but feels Australia’s cyber-regulator, eSafety, “needs more tools in their belt to take on these billion-dollar social media companies and hold them to account.”

Those tools include the ability to demand information about a platform’s attempts to enforce the ban, including third-party information from age assurance or app-store providers.

“Social media companies have a social responsibility, and they must uphold their legal responsibility in Australia to keep under 16s off social media,” Albanese said.

The new fines can reach AU$99 million ($68.25 million) for systemic failures – back of the sofa money for the social media giants.

Qualcomm builds throttled-for-China datacenter chips

Qualcomm last week launched a new range of datacenter chips, and CEO Cristiano Amon later told Japanese outlet Nikkei the company has already created versions of them compliant with US export rules.

“There are very clear guidelines about how you can ship products to China, and we have versions of all of our products that comply with those guidelines, " he said. "We are engaged in conversations and are positively optimistic about the reaction we're getting."

Rumors suggest Chinese social media giant ByteDance might be one source of those positive reactions.

Chinese chip champ delivers another modest machine

Chinese chip designer Loongson has delivered another server CPU that won’t scare AMD or Intel.

The 16-core Loongson 3C3000 hums along at 1.5 to 1.8GHz while consuming 40 watts. It uses Loongson’s proprietary instruction set architecture that draws on MIPS and RISC technology. Chinese media report that each core packs 64KB of private L1 instruction cache and 64KB of private L1 data cache, and that the chip shares 16MB of L2 cache among all cores. The memory controller is 2×72-bit DDR4-2400, supporting ECC verification.

The company says it’s a low-cost CPU suited to everyday workloads such as file servers, database servers or web servers.

Intel and AMD continue to make 16-core server CPUs, but with faster clock speeds and superior specs compared to the latest Loongson offering. The one thing those American CPUs lack is Beijing’s blessing: China’s government encourages local organizations to buy Chinese hardware whenever possible.

Japan extends Air Force’s mission into space

Japan’s government last week ordered a name change and re-org for its Air Self-Defense Force, which as of next year will be renamed the "Aerospace Self-Defense Force."

Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said the changes are needed because reliance on space-based services like GPS navigation mean Japan needs to defend its orbital interests.

The re-org means Japan’s government will upgrade its Space Operations Squadron into a full Space Operations Command, staffed by 880 personnel.

Japan is one of just ten nations – plus the European Union – that has the capability to launch payloads into orbit.

Iran’s internet ends in tiers

Internet Governance Researcher Imad Payande has published updated research on the state of Iran’s internet, which he says now offers tiers of access to different users.

“In the first one to two weeks of the conflict, relatively unrestricted connectivity appeared limited to specific groups – primarily journalists and individuals with institutional affiliations. For the broader population, access to the global Internet was largely unavailable,” he wrote.

In the second week of the war he saw “configurations” go on sale – “custom connection profiles enabling access to the open Internet.”

Payande said those connections “relied on alternative protocols and tools rather than standard VPNs, suggesting a different underlying infrastructure and possibly a limited number of controlled gateways.”

“Alongside these informal markets, more institutionalized models of access emerged. Telecom operators introduced restricted SIM cards under frameworks often described as ‘Pro Internet.’ These were made available to selected users – such as companies and researchers – through screening processes. However, access remained limited to a narrow set of services, prioritizing stability over openness.”

He thinks Iran’s government now regulates internet access at the infrastructure level, with access allowed for some and not for others. And those who can get online pay for the privilege.

Another week, another WiseTech mess

Already beset by allegations of CEO sleaze, odd share trades, and human trafficking, Australian SaaSy logistics outfit WiseTech now has major software flaws to address.

Infosec outfit Searchlight Cyber last week published research after finding hard-coded master keys in the company’s products that made it possible for an attacker to log in without a password and impersonate real customers and partners – and then enjoy access to data such as financial documents and contact details for users’ staff.

Searchlight Cyber says its researchers informed WiseTech of the vulnerabilities prior to publication, and that the Australian company made a round of fixes but is “still working on further mitigations.” ®