Ransomware attacks dominated headlines over the past year. Apple, Samsung, Nvidia, Colonial Pipeline and several others hogged the headlines for such attacks. The latest victim of a ransomware attack in India has been the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Online services at the hospital have already been unavailable for 10 days with services only set to resume next week in a phased manner.
In other news, the issues at the social media platform Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover continue to compound. The eccentric billionaire fired shots at Apple as he claimed that the tech giant had threatened to take Twitter off its App Store and said that he would make an alternative to Google and Android phones.
AIIMS Cyber Attack: Rs 200 crore ransom demanded
After days of online services being affected, officials admitted that hackers had called for crores in ransom. The perpetrators of the cyberattack on AIIMS called for a Rs 200-crore ransom to be paid in cryptocurrency, officials said.
With the effort of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and the National Informatic Centre (NIC), services are expected to come online next week at the hospital in a phased manner. The November 24 ransomware attack forced hospital staff to manually settle bills, conduct tests and perform other functions.
ASUS India expands its enterprise portfolio
ASUS launched six new laptops in India, adding to the line-up of its enterprise flagship series – ExpertBook. The new laptops are optimised to enhance productivity and deliver powerful working experiences. Convertible laptops have been designed for hybrid working.
Neuralink to begin human trials in six months
Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink, which develops brain chip interfaces, will begin human clinical trials in six months, and one of its first targeted applications is restoring vision.
Twitter takeover: Data Leak hits 5.4 million users
At least 5.4 million Twitter users’ records have been stolen via an internal bug and leaked online on a hacker forum. Records include non-public information phone numbers and email addresses. An additional 1.4 million Twitter profile records have been shared privately. The data was stolen with a Twitter API bug that was fixed earlier in the year in January.
Apple vs Musk
Musk went on the offensive against tech giant Apple, accusing the company of threatening to block Twitter from its app store. With a possible lax moderation policy, Twitter may fall foul of Apple and Google whose App Store policies distinctly talk about hateful and objectionable content. Musk in response stated that he would make a new alternative phone to compete against the two smartphone giants.
Amazon enters high-performance computing with new chips
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is releasing a new version of its Graviton chips for its cloud computing customers. The new chips will be used for high-performance computation like forecasting and gene sequencing reported Bloomberg. The company’s foray into making high-performance chips will put it into direct competition with suppliers like Intel and Nvidia.