Mid-week news round-up: Wednesday, October 13th 2021

Amazon and Google workers publicly condemn the tech companies ties with the Israeli military. According to the employee's open letter, Project Nimbus was set to sell dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government.

Project Nimbus is a $1.2bn contract to provide cloud services for the Israeli military and government. According to the employees who chose to stay anonymous due to repercussions, such technology allows surveillance and unlawful data collection on Palestinians.

The contract was said to have been signed on the same week as the Israeli military attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 250 people, of which 60 were children.

Google to strengthen the security of its high-risk users with USB security keys. The news came after Google has issued thousands of warnings to Gmail users who were targeted by hackers.

The warnings were issued in late September when the company spotted the campaign, which targeted around 14,000 Google users from various industries. It is believed that the campaign came from a Russian-linked hacking group.

The USB keys will provide a two-factor authentication — an additional layer of security besides the password.

In 2016, Dell Secureworks revealed another hacking campaign that targeted nearly 4,000 users who have been involved with Hilary Clinton's presidential campaign. Material leaked during the attack was subsequently used to influence the US Presidential election results.