Bytes: What’s new in tech

Air regulators raise 5G questions

AT&T and Verizon are limiting 5G service for six months to allow federal regulators to review risks to air safety, said Drew FitzGerald and Micah Maidenberg in The Wall Street Journal. The carriers said they would “lower the signals’ cell-tower power levels nationwide and impose stricter power caps near airports and helipads” in response to concerns raised by the Federal Aviation Administration that 5G signals “could confuse some radar altimeters.” While wireless companies transmit 5G signals along a different frequency band than the one altimeters use, air-safety officials are “worried that some especially sensitive sensors could still pick up cell-tower transmissions.” Phone carriers have spent $81 billion for wireless licenses to expand their 5G service, but they have been at an “impasse” with regulators over potential air-safety issues and have already delayed the rollout of some services as the FAA pores over data.

Apple sues over spy software

Apple last week filed suit against Israeli spyware firm NSO Group for hacking into iPhones, said Mitchell Clark and Richard Lawler in TheVerge.com. NSO’s Pegasus software was designed to “let governments remotely access” a target’s phone “without requiring any action from the user and without leaving a trace.” The software can attack both iPhone and Android devices, but Apple—which has branded itself around security—is the first phone maker to take NSO to court, citing reports that the spyware has been used against journalists, activists, and politicians. In the suit, Apple claims NSO violated its terms of service by creating “more than 100” fake Apple IDs to send data to targets via iMessage. The messages worked because NSO exploited a since-patched bug in how iMessage handled GIF images and PDFs.

Stopping the Christmas bot invasion

Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill aimed at cracking down on “cyber Grinches,” said Daniela Sirtori-Cortina in Bloomberg .com. The legislation seeks to “ban bots from bypassing security measures on online retail portals.” It would expand a law passed in 2016 that prohibited automated bots from buying up tickets for events such as concerts and sports games. The new bill, labeled the Stopping Grinch Bots Act, comes as the activity has exploded, with bots snapping up “entire inventories of popular holiday toys and reselling them at higher prices.”