Pumpkin Spice Latte weather is upon us! Time to start swapping our shorts for sweaters. While the Metaverse is tempting, the weather’s still fair (depending on where you are).
This week we have Meta’s Indian Ambitions; NASA’s Next Moonshot; and Twilio’s Big Hack.
Analytics, Digital, Design In Action
Meta’s Indian Super App
Meta announced a new integration with JioMart today, through which users can text “Hi” to a certain number and be taken to an in-app shopping experience. The shopping experience looks fairly familiar, akin to what Instacart and other delivery services have been designing for years. But here, there’s no other app. And for WhatsApp, that’s a big deal: WhatsApp users in India can now do their grocery shopping without ever leaving their messaging app.
Customers in India will be able to browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalog on WhatsApp, add items to a cart and make the payments via local payments rail UPI without ever leaving the instant messaging service, the companies said.
WhatsApp, which is used by about half a billion Indians each month, got the approval to extend its UPI-powered payments service to 100 million users in the country earlier this year after several delays and setbacks.
“Excited to launch our partnership with JioMart in India. This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp — people can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat. Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come,” Mark Zuckerberg said.
NASA’s Next Moonshot
53 years after humans first walked on the moon, NASA is kicking off its ambitious Artemis program to return us there, starting with an uncrewed launch of a massive new rocket. However, the launch initially scheduled for Monday Aug 29, was postponed.
NASA says the next attempt at a debut space flight of its "mega moon rocket" could happen as early as Friday, but engineers and other experts must first review a raft of problems that saw the Artemis mission's planned launch to be scrapped prior to liftoff.
NASA endured several issues at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida Monday morning. First, it was the unco-operative weather, with thunderstorms delaying the propellant load for the rocket. The problems seen Monday were reminiscent of NASA's space shuttle era, when hydrogen fuel leaks disrupted countdowns and delayed a string of launches back in 1990.
In any case, we’re poised to see an increase of pursuits in space travel and the broader aerospace & defense space, a return to Silicon Valley’s roots.
Twilio’s Big Hack
Twilio, which earlier this month became a sophisticated phishing attack, disclosed last week that the threat actors also managed to gain access to the accounts of 93 individual users of its Authy two-factor authentication (2FA) service.
The communication tools company said the unauthorized access made it possible for the adversary to register additional devices to those accounts. It has since identified and removed the illegitimately added devices from the impacted accounts.
This has also impacted other large firms such as Okta and DoorDash. The threat actor behind the Twilio hack used their access to steal one-time passwords (OTPs) delivered over SMS from customers of Okta identity and access management company.
Okta provides its customers with multiple forms of authentication for services, including temporary codes delivered over SMS through Twilio.
Meanwhile, DoorDash said malicious hackers stole credentials from employees of a third-party vendor that were then used to gain access to some of DoorDash’s internal tools.
We’re also recruiting for our ABD Team!
This week, we want to highlight a new BizOps position. ABD team has increasing needs for cross-functional collaborations, strategic alignment, and project management. We are looking for results-oriented individuals to drive organizational changes and push forward some of our strategic initiatives.
Also, check out our other positions that we are actively hiring.
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