Josh Porter
Hackers breach Microsoft but not for the reason you think
Last week Microsoft revealed that they were breached recently by a Russia-backed hacking group known as Midnight Blizzard. According to Microsoft, the hackers used a “password spray attack”, brute forcing their way into a legacy account from which they were able to access a “small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts”.
While this attack doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy, the motivation behind the attack is what is most interesting. What the hackers were after wasn’t corporate intelligence or personal data, but rather any information that Microsoft was holding on the Midnight Blizzard group!
Microsoft have not disclosed the extent of the breach or what the hackers accessed, but have urged users and partners of their commitment to raising security standards.
Read more here.
London ranks second in the world for climate tech funding
In positive news, according to a comprehensive report of international start-up hubs compiled by Startup Genome, London-based climate tech start-ups raised a total of £2.75bn of funding last year, ranking London as the second-highest for climate tech funding globally.
Beaten only by Stockholm, London came out ahead of other crucibles of innovation like the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, and Shanghai. London’s climate tech sector is growing rapidly, this report marking a 59% year-over-year increase for climate tech funding from 2022.
Read more here.
AI chatbot gets DPD into hot water
In a humorous bit of AI news, the UK parcel service DPD’s AI chatbot has gotten itself into trouble by swearing at a customer and declaring DPD to be the “worst delivery firm in the world”.
After an update to their chatbot system, customers noticed that it was possible to encourage the AI to say things that DPD almost certainly wouldn’t want it to. Unfortunately for DPD, by the time they were made aware of the error and could disable the chatbot, customers had already had plenty of fun with one customer requesting the chatbot write a haiku about how useless DPD are to which it obediently obliged.
Read more here.
