#WeeklyRecap: New Echo products, 2FA cracking malware, and more
This week, a number of developments were noted in the world of technology. Amazon unveiled a plethora of new products under its Echo, Eero, and Ring brands at its annual hardware event, Samsung showcased a new flagship-grade, albeit affordable, smartphone, while Google made navigation simpler in today's COVID-19-hit world. Let's take a quick look at everything.
Amazon's flurry of hardware announcements
The biggest news of the week was the flurry of hardware products unveiled by Amazon. The Jeff Bezos-led company announced a cloud gaming service called Luna, a new, ball-shaped Echo, Echo Dot, and an automatically swiveling Echo Show 10. It also showcased a Ring security drone, Car Cam, Car Alarm, Eero 6, Eero Pro 6 routers, and Fire TV Stick 3rd-generation, its Lite version.
Google's updates for Maps, Android TV, Gmail
Google, on its part, introduced a new COVID-19 layer in Maps to help people see the number of cases in a particular region and whether they are increasing or decreasing. Additionally, the company also launched Android TV 11 with new features like low-latency mode and teased a facelift for Gmail, which will bring a new, overhauled logo.
Tesla, Google suffered outage; Instagram vulnerability revealed
Both Tesla and Google suffered an outage, with the latter's issue lasting for several hours and leaving Gmail, Meet, Analytics, Docs, and Drive affected. Tesla's network issue was fixed in an hour. Also, researchers from Check Point revealed that Instagram app had a serious vulnerability that could have been used by malicious actors to take over accounts. It has also been patched now.
Twitter's bias, voice DMs, and a dangerous 2FA-cracking malware
Among other things, Twitter's image preview algorithm was suggested to be biased against the Black community; the company has launched an investigation into the matter. Separately, it is also testing voice messages in the microblogging platform. Meanwhile, a few reports claimed that an Iranian hacker group has developed a malware that shows phishing pages and steals incoming 2FA SMS codes to break into accounts.
Finally, some notable hardware launches
In the hardware segment, along with Amazon's products, several smartphones were unveiled. This included Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, LG K62, K52, K42, K71, Vivo V20 SE, OPPO Reno4 Lite, Reno4 SE 5G, Reno4 Pro MS Dhoni Edition, TECNO Spark 6, Spark 6 Air, Realme C17, Realme Narzo 20, POCO X3, Infinix Hot 10, Vivo V20, V20 Pro, Nokia 2.4, 3.4, and Moto E7 Plus.
