US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo admitted that not all American chipmakers are happy with the sanctions against China, since the restrictions lead to a loss of profit.

“I know there are heads of chip companies sitting in the room who are a little annoyed by what I did because [они] lose profits. But that’s life. The issue of protecting national security is more important than short-term profit,” said Gina Raimondo.

She added that mostly representatives of this industry cooperate and help her department, but she also acknowledged the presence of some problems.

We have a good relationship. But of course there is some natural tension. For the first time, we refused an entire country, i.e. China, in access to semiconductors and equipment. We will continue to work in this direction.

Gina Raimondo

She also acknowledged that if Japan and the Netherlands, which have leading positions in semiconductor manufacturing equipment, continue to supply China, then sanctions will make no sense.

The other day, a rather curious event happened on the market quite quietly. Nothing has introduced the Nothing Chats application, which could be called just another instant messenger, but the point is that this application actually allows Android owners to exchange messages with iPhone owners via iMessage. And a few days later, this application was removed from the Google Store.

Nothing initially stated that this was done due to the discovery of several bugs that simply needed to be fixed. However, it seems that the real reason is something else, and it is worse.

Let us remind you that the interaction between the Android messenger and iMessage occurs on a third party. She is represented by the Sunbird company, which provides its platform through which the magic happens. However, it turned out that in terms of data security, this platform is apparently much worse than Sunbird itself stated. In particular, there is no end-to-end encryption.

The Sunbird platform, and therefore the Nothing Chats app, requires a new user of the app to submit their Apple ID credentials to set up syncing. This data is then authenticated on your behalf using a virtual machine running MacOS. The main problem is that the request containing user credentials occurs over an unencrypted channel (HTTP).

The situation as a whole is more complex and is fully described on the Text.Blog website, where several specialists explain how they discovered the problem and what it is. Among other things, they show that they can obtain users’ personal data.

Thus, in fact, Nothing may not be to blame for the situation, but whether the application will now return to the Google Store is an open question.

Google has introduced a new version of the Titan Security Key. The new product is already available for purchase at a price of $30.

In its press release, Google from the very first lines focuses on the fact that this solution allows you to abandon passwords.

Eliminate passwords and prevent attacks with best-in-class security keys that can store up to 250 unique access keys, and learn about our commitment to providing 100,000 keys to high-risk users worldwide by 2024

We are talking about free distribution of 100,000 such devices. Google says it and its partners will distribute the Titan Security Key to users around the world.

The new version of the dongle is available in two versions: USB-A and USB-C. The first one costs 30 dollars, but for some reason they ask for 35 dollars for the second one. Both versions have an NFC module for easy and fast connection to mobile devices.

Google Keys supports FIDO2, so can be used as a two-factor authentication solution.