Five stories not to miss

A bite-size rundown of this month’s biggest tech stories, including a potential ban of facialrecognition tools, an urgent Windows patch and jail time for a hacker who finagled a fiver.

1 EU fixes sights on facial recognition

Facial recognition faces scrutiny in the EU, with officials mulling over a five-year ban on it in public spaces while potential threats are investigated. Facerecognition systems have been tested in UK train stations, shopping centres and football stadia with little oversight, but continental watchdogs are proposing a three-to-five-year moratorium to assess the risks to privacy from abuse by private and public operators.

2 Number’s up for unlucky lottery hacker

A UK hacker felt the full force of computer misuse laws when he was jailed for nine months for his role in an attack on the National Lottery system. Anwar Batson made a life-changing £5 out of the attack, which used readily downloadable tools, but lottery organiser Camelot justified the case saying its response to the attacks had cost it £230,000 and 250 closed accounts.

3 Huawei maps new path to bypass Google

Under-fire Chinese manufacturer Huawei has continued to spruce up its software portfolio by inking a deal with one-time navigation giant TomTom. TomTom has its own apps on both Apple ad Android platforms, but with Huawei banned from using Google services, the company plans to build its own mapping software using TomTom as a foundation.

4 Travelex system takes a gap month

Travelex struggled for weeks after an apparent Sodinokibi ransomware attack knocked its services offline in airport kiosks, high streets and with partner banks, causing upheaval for travellers relying on the company for their foreign currency. Travelex remained coy over whether it had paid attackers in order to restore services, many of which remained offline four weeks after the initial attack, while staff had initially reverted to pen and paper to complete transactions.

5 Microsoft issues urgent patch over NSA fears

Microsoft was forced to rush out a security update after officials at the US National Security Agency (NSA) spotted a dangerous vulnerability that allowed hackers to spoof certificates for software and traffic. The spoofed certificates would fool systems running Windows 10 and Windows Server into thinking malicious content came from a trusted source and enable them to launch man-in-the-middle attacks against

HTTPS connections.