Finance

The World Bank’s annual Doing Business survey has been described by some as the “World Cup” or “Olympics” for governments competing to make their countries attractive to businesses. The ranking measures how easy it is to do business in a country by examining regulatory environments and is enormously influential: it has inspired more than 3,500 reforms across 190 economies; in 2017-18 alone, 128 economies undertook a record 314 reforms.

While this attention to policy responsiveness is admirable, a key element is missing from rankings such as Doing Business: they say little about the ease or difficulty of doing digital business. We aim to close this gap with the first analysis of the Ease of Doing Digital Business in 42 countries around the world. We picked these countries because they constitute the most significant markets for digital businesses worldwide and offer a consistent set of data across a wide range of indicators. We find that digital business environments require distinctive policy focuses and investments. Our evaluation is intended as a complement to that of the World Bank; it provides decision-makers a basis to compare countries not only in terms of “traditional” business-friendliness but also in terms of factors affecting setting up digital businesses.

While all businesses have elements of digital technology built into them, we define “digital businesses” as ones that have a digital platform as core to its business model. We analyzed four essential digital platforms: ecommerce platforms (e.g. Amazon, eBay); digital media platforms (e.g. YouTube, Netflix); sharing economy platforms (e.g. Uber, Airbnb); and online freelance platforms (e.g. Upwork, Toptal).

See more at Harvard Business Review.

How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet.

That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Fransisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.

And it’s led to swift growth for Bridgefy: downloads are up almost 4,000% over the past 60 days, according to Apptopia estimates (Apptopia is an app metrics company).

The app can connect people via standard Bluetooth across an entire city, thanks to a mesh network. Chatting is speediest with people who are close, of course, within a hundred meters (330 feet), but you can also chat with people who are farther away. Your messages will simply “hop” via other Bridgefy users’ phones until they find your intended target.

See more at Forbes.

• Pentagon research to sift 250,000 news items in initial phase
•  Fears grow about viral political memes polarizing society

Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” as the top Republican in Congress blocks efforts to protect the integrity of elections.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society.

See more at Bloomberg.

American Airlines says it will fly the Boeing 787 from Philadelphia to both international and domestic destinations starting in January.

The aircraft, nicknamed the Dreamliner and applauded for its bigger windows, quieter flights, improved cabin air circulation and lighter weight, will serve international routes from Philadelphia to Amsterdam, Zurich and Manchester as well as two domestic routes: Philadelphia-Chicago and Philadelphia-Dallas.

American laid out its new Philadelphia 787 destinations on Wednesday in a letter to pilots from J.C. Gulbranson, vice president of operations and crew performance.

The new flights are just the start of a 787 buildup in Philadelphia which will require the establishment of a 787-crew base in the city, Gulbranson wrote.

“PHL will continue to see an increase in Boeing 787 flying long term,” he wrote. “To support this network growth, we will open a pilot bid position for Boeing 787s in PHL in January 2020.”

Until that base is fully staffed, some of the flights will be flown by 787 pilots based on Dallas and Chicago, he said.

See more at Forbes.

Laxman Muthiyah describes himself as a web developer, security researcher and sometimes a hacker in his Twitter profile. I think he does himself a disservice as a quick glance at his “Zero Hack” blog reveals he is a very talented, and pretty prolific, hacker. Luckily he’s also one of the good guys and uses his talents to find vulnerabilities that can then be fixed by the vendor before the threat actors can exploit them.

His latest discovery was a flaw in the way that Instagram handled the validation of password reset codes. A defect that meant an attacker could request 1 million password reset codes within a ten-minute window and with 100% success.

The Instagram hack background

Why use the “Nasty List” to steal Instagram account passwords when you can just use the system password reset process instead?  

Back in July, Muthiyah revealed he found an Instagram vulnerability that allowed him to “hack any Instagram account without consent permission.” The Facebook security team, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion (£820 million) on April 9, 2012, thought this was a serious enough problem that it awarded Muthiyah a $30,000 (£24,500) bounty for the disclosure. The vulnerability was quickly addressed and fixed. You can read more about it in this Forbes report from Lee Mathews, but the tl;dr is that it involved the Instagram use of six-digit password reset request validation codes.

See more at Forbes.