Bytes: What’s new in tech

A two-pronged war on ransomware

Microsoft and law enforcement groups disabled one of the world’s largest hacking organizations last week, only to discover that the National Security Agency had already been targeting the same group, said David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth in The New York Times. TrickBot, a “vast network of infected computers, known as a botnet,” is an effort run by “Russian-speaking cybercriminals” based in Eastern Europe who have been behind some of the largest ransomware attacks in the United States. When Microsoft sought court authorization for additional operations to disrupt the group, fearing TrickBot might use attacks to “lock up election systems,” it discovered that U.S. Cyber Command, a “military cousin of the NSA,” was already conducting covert operations against the group. “The one-two punch painted a picture of accelerating cyberconflict” ahead of the election.

Public debut for driverless taxis

Waymo is “opening its fully driverless ridehailing service in suburban Phoenix to the public,” said Ira Boudway in Bloomberg.com last week. The Alphabet-owned ride-hailing service began offering truly driverless rides, without a “safety driver” in the front seat, to a few hundred Phoenix residents in 2019. Last week, it expanded the test to allow the broader public to ride in driverless cars. While Waymo is the acknowledged technology leader in driverless vehicles, it found the process of building a commercial service “arduous.” It has been “five years since Waymo provided the first-ever passenger trip in a driverless vehicle on a public road.” The fleet of driverless minivans now numbers more than 300, operating in an area of roughly 50 square miles.

Square bets on Bitcoin

The payments company Square invested

$50 million in Bitcoin to make the cryptocurrency “more accessible and useful” through the company’s Cash App, said Shalini Nagarajan in BusinessInsider.com. The payment platform is led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a vocal proponent of Bitcoin. Dorsey has said that in as little as a decade, Bitcoin will “become the world’s ‘single currency.’” To make sure Square is prepared for a potential future flood of cryptocurrency transactions, the company bought almost 5,000 Bitcoins, which now make up about 1 percent of Square’s assets. Square has also “invested heavily in cryptocurrency infrastructure, or cold storage, to protect customer funds from potential hackers.”