Technolgy Rules: Daily Crunch: There’s a major iPhone email security bug

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Daily Crunch: There’s a major iPhone email security bug

Apple plans to fix an iPhone email security bug, Magic Leap cuts 1,000 staffers and Google is requiring all advertisers to identify themselves.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 23, 2020.

1. A new iPhone email security bug may let hackers steal private data

According to security firm ZecOps, the bug is in the iPhone’s default Mail app. By sending a specially crafted email to the victim’s device, an attacker can overrun the device’s memory, allowing the attacker to remotely run malicious code to steal data from the device.

The bug dates back to iOS 6, but on the latest version of iOS 13, it doesn’t require any user interaction. Motherboard, which first reported the story, said the bug has been fixed in a beta version of the software, and a fix will be rolled out in an upcoming update.

2. Magic Leap reportedly slashes 1,000 jobs and steps away from consumer plans

Magic Leap announced today that it has laid off a “number of employees” and is backing away from its consumer ambitions to focus more heavily on selling to enterprise customers. Bloomberg reports that half of the company’s employees were laid off, roughly 1,000 in total.

3. Google is extending identity verification requirements to all advertisers

The identity verification feature was first introduced in 2018, requiring political advertisers to provide documents to verify their identity, which is then displayed as part of the ad itself. Moving forward, Google says it will make identity verification a required part of the ad buying process, regardless of topic.

4. JustEat Takeaway $7.6B merger approved, pair pick up $756M in new funding

The UK’s competition watchdog officially gave a nod to the merger between UK’s JustEat and the Netherlands’ Takeaway.com. And the merged company announced that it had raised an additional €700 million ($756 million) in funding.

5. Cowboy VC’s Aileen Lee: Your coronavirus scenario planning should be more conservative

Lee and her fellow Cowboy Ventures partner Ted Wang joined us for our first episode of Extra Crunch Live, a virtual speaker series for Extra Crunch members. They covered a wide range of topics, including PPP loans, advice for business leaders around layoffs, the right time to seek funding and the right firms from which to seek that funding, how to pitch during a downturn and which sectors in particular Cowboy is interested in financing right now. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Boston Dynamics’ Spot finds a new career in telemedicine amid COVID-19 pandemic

For two weeks, Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot has been walking the halls of local hospital Brigham and Women’s. Telemedicine wasn’t generally listed as one of the primary applications for the company’s first commercial product, but Boston Dynamics is only one in a long list of tech companies that’s found itself shifting on the fly as the COVID-19 pandemic has become an all-consuming part of life.

7. Bill Gurley is stepping away from an active role at Benchmark, 21 years after joining the firm

Gurley’s transition out of the firm won’t surprise many. Benchmark — which has always run a fairly small operation — has routinely groomed new investors as veterans of the firm have moved on.

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