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Morgan Stanley Sets US$200 Target Price For AAPL - Cites Apple Car, AR/VR

Charlotte Henry ·

Morgan Stanley has set AAPL a US$200 price target. In a note seen by AppleInsider, the bank cited Apple’s expected moves into cars and AR/VR as the reasons for this price hike.

Lead analyst Katy Huberty said that the bank is cautious on IT hardware heading into 2022 but noted that Apple should benefit from “a light to quality,” driven by new products being priced-in, as well as the iPhone and App Store Huberty points out that Apple shares don’t appear to bake-in the impact of new products. She points out that Apple is developing products aimed at both the AR/VR and self-driving car markets, and the new price target reflects that. “Today, we know that Apple is working on products to address two significantly large markets – AR/VR and Autonomous Vehicles – and as we get closer to these products becoming a reality, we believe valuation would need to reflect the optionality of these future opportunities,” she wrote.

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Co-Founder of Swiss SMS Giant 'Mitto AG' Accused of Government Surveillance

Andrew Orr ·

Swiss tech company Mitto AG is trusted by companies such as Twitter and Google to deliver SMS security codes to users, appointment reminders, sales promotions, and more. It’s co-founder and COO Ilja Gorelik has been accused of selling access to Mitto’s networks for surveillance.

The existence of the alternate service was only known to a small number of people within the company, these former employees said. Gorelik sold the service to surveillance companies which in turn contracted with government agencies, according to the employees.

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1inch Now Available on Ledger Live to Swap Your Cryptocurrencies

Andrew Orr ·

Ledger has recently added crypto swapping service 1inch to the Ledger Live app. It offers competitive transaction fees across the largest available liquidity pools.

1inch is a DeFi aggregator spanning over 120 DEXs across Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain and Optimistic Ethereum. It provides you with competitive swapping rates across the biggest available liquidity pools. For instance, you’ll get competitive rates when you swap ETH for Tether, or AAVE for UNI. So far, these options are exclusively available on the Ethereum protocol through Ledger Live.

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Safari Now Supports Wide Color Gamut 2D Graphics Using HTML Canvas

Andrew Orr ·

The WebKit team is out with a blog post today discussing how Safari handles color gamuts such as sRBG and Display P3.

One notable omission in wide gamut color support, until now, has been in the HTML canvas element. The 2D canvas API was introduced before wide gamut displays were common, and until now has only handled drawing and manipulating sRGB pixel values. Earlier this year, a proposal for creating canvas contexts using other color spaces was added to the HTML standard, and we’ve recently added support for this to WebKit.

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Microsoft Seizes Domains From Chinese Group 'NICKEL' Used to Attack Governments

Andrew Orr ·

NICKEL is a China-based threat actor that targets governments, diplomatic entities, and NGOs around the world. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit has disrupted their operation.

MSTIC has observed NICKEL actors using exploits against unpatched systems to compromise remote access services and appliances. Upon successful intrusion, they have used credential dumpers or stealers to obtain legitimate credentials, which they used to gain access to victim accounts. NICKEL actors created and deployed custom malware that allowed them to maintain persistence on victim networks over extended periods of time.

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WhatsApp Users Can Enable Disappearing Messages by Default

Andrew Orr ·

WhatsApp is now letting users turn on disappearing messages for all chats by default.

Prior to Monday’s update, users had to manually enable ephemerality for each new chat with another individual. WhatsApp is additionally also giving users the option to have their messages disappear after 24 hours or 90 days, in addition to the seven-day period it originally introduced the feature with last year.

Cool Stuff Found

Apple TV+ Suggests Christmas Viewing

Charlotte Henry ·

In a new Christmas trailer, Apple TV+ suggests shows and films that it recommends for viewers over the festive period. The content featured includes Swansong, The Morning Show, Ted Lasso, and, of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas. All this content is available to subscribers now or will be becoming available shortly.

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iPhone 13 And Apple Watch Carrier Rebate Wrangles

Charlotte Henry ·

A significant number of customers have reportedly found it difficult to get an expected rebate back from carriers on various products, including the iPhone 13 and Apple Watch. One of those was Bloomberg News’s Mark Gurman. In his latest Power On newsletter, he described the issue and the various ways some people had resolved it., which is likely to be useful to others.

My struggles with the rebates process started with the Apple Watch. I had purchased the Apple Watch Series 7, which came out in October, and submitted a request to T-Mobile for its $100 rebate.  Several weeks after my submission, to my surprise, T-Mobile’s promotion website said that my claim was denied because the product wasn’t activated during the promotion window. This, of course, was false. Multiple hourlong phone calls with T-Mobile customer service didn’t resolve the situation, nor did messages sent to the company’s support team over Twitter. Ultimately, the issue was only fixed after talking to T-Mobile at the corporate level. We figured out that my rebate was denied because the fine print of the deal—depending on how you read it—requires the opening of an entirely new phone number.

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Verizon Automatically Tracks Your Data in New Update

Andrew Orr ·

In a new program called Verizon Custom Experience, the company is automatically opting customers in to track their data. But you can opt out.

A new program innocuously titled the “Verizon Custom Experience” is sold to users as a way for the company to “personalize our communications with you, give you more relevant product and service recommendations, and develop plans, services and offers that are more appealing to you.” To accomplish this, all a Verizon subscriber needs to do is… allow the company access to all the websites you visit, apps you use, as well as see everyone you happen to call and text.

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Hundreds of Tor Servers From 'KAX17' Threaten to Deanonymize Users

Andrew Orr ·

Security researcher ‘Nusenu’ has uncovered hundreds of Tor servers belonging to an entity tracked as KAX17.

Grouping these servers under the KAX17 umbrella, Nusenu says this threat actor has constantly added servers with no contact details to the Tor network in industrial quantities, operating servers in the realm of hundreds at any given point.

KAX17’s focus on Tor entry and middle relays led Nusenu to believe that the group, which he described as “non-amateur level and persistent,” is trying to collect information on users connecting to the Tor network and attempting to map their routes inside it.

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Government Traces Ransomware Payments to Business Address in Moscow

Andrew Orr ·

The New York Times writes how the U.S. government has traced ransomware payments to an address in Federation Tower East in Moscow, Russia.

That this high-rise in Moscow’s financial district has emerged as an apparent hub of such money laundering has convinced many security experts that the Russian authorities tolerate ransomware operators. The targets are almost exclusively outside Russia, they point out, and in at least one case documented in a U.S. sanctions announcement, the suspect was assisting a Russian espionage agency.