Samsung's weather app sparks storm of controversy by handing territory to North Korea

"Samsung found itself facing down controversy in South Korea last week, when the weather app pre-installed on many of its devices incorrectly labelled an island territory named Dokdo as part of North Korea. Dokdo is a group of volcanic islets that is the subject of a territorial dispute between South Korea, North Korea, and Japan. Netizens were therefore outraged by a champion of South Korean industry handing the islands to foes in North Korea."

"Mislabelling the map was therefore sufficiently controversial that Samsung quickly pushed an update to fix the error - and blamed data from The Weather Channel as the source of the mistake. While we're talking about islands ... The Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Kiribati, and the Republic of Nauru last week connected to the world over a submarine cable for the first time."

"The three Pacific island nations hooked up to the East Micronesia Cable System, which NEC Corporation built and last week handed over to telecoms companies in the three nations. The cable can carry 100Gbps to each country where it lands, and has capacity to reach 10 Tbps. The three nations are collectively home to around 100,000 people."

"Antivirus vendor Bitdefender last week published what it says is evidence of a China-backed "multi-wave intrusion targeting an Azerbaijani oil and gas company from late December 2025 through late February 2026." Bitdefender linked the attacks to the resurgent FamousSparrow crew, which apparently deployed "an evolved DLL sideloading technique" to drop the Deed RAT and Terndoor backdoors."

Samsung devices shipped with a weather app that incorrectly labeled Dokdo as part of North Korea, triggering public outrage in South Korea. Dokdo is a volcanic islet group at the center of a territorial dispute involving South Korea, North Korea, and Japan. Samsung responded by pushing an update to correct the map labeling and attributed the mistake to data sourced from The Weather Channel. Separately, Micronesia, Kiribati, and Nauru connected to the internet via the East Micronesia Cable System for the first time. The submarine cable, built by NEC, provides 100Gbps per landing country and up to 10 Tbps capacity. Bitdefender reported alleged China-backed multi-wave intrusions targeting an Azerbaijani oil and gas company, linked to the FamousSparrow crew and involving DLL sideloading to deploy Deed RAT and Terndoor backdoors.

Read at theregister