How Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed internal data

Good afternoon and welcome to TechCrunch PM. It might be Friday, but the news never sleeps. Today we dig into what happened when Mercedes-Benz left a private key exposed online, why tech layoffs don’t seem to be stopping, and how Microsoft is making lemonade out of lemons. Have a great weekend! — Christine

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TechCrunch PM Top 3

How a mistakenly published password exposed Mercedes-Benz source code: It all started with a routine internet scan that discovered a Mercedes employee’s authentication token in a public GitHub repository.

Yes, the tech layoff surge you are feeling is real: Tech layoffs were trending down in the last half of 2023, and then 2024 came and had to mess everything up. Over on TechCrunch+, Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim look at tech layoff data to tell us what’s going on.

NSA is buying Americans’ internet browsing records without a warrant: Call it a “legal gray space” if you will. However, until a U.S. court says otherwise, the agency will continue to argue that method is perfectly legal. Bad news for Kevin Malone.

More top reads

Microsoft says Russian hackers targeted others: One week after revealing it was a victim of a hack carried out by Russian government spies, Microsoft writes in a blog post that it wasn’t the only one. And it’s being a good friend and notifying those other organizations.

Robotics as a service: Chef Robotics is ready to whip up some commercial business after raising $14.75 million in an equity/debt combo. Automation in the kitchen can be a costly endeavor for restaurants where profit margins are often low. However, Chef Robotics wants to focus on food assembly instead of cooking.

Inside Apple’s EU changes: Apple dropped some iOS changes yesterday related to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. Now it’s piloting a program for “contingent pricing” for developers to make the App Store more appealing. Also, we wouldn’t be TechCrunch if we didn’t take a closer look at what all of this means.

When the name of the song is on the tip of your tongue: The Shazam app now has a feature that lets you identify music you hear on a TikTok or YouTube video while wearing headphones. This is something that was available, but not a feature you could do while wearing headphones.

Three UK councils still down following cyberattack: The councils for Canterbury, Dover and Thanet — all based in the U.K. county of Kent — say their council tax payments and online forms are still disrupted one week after confirming a cyberattack had knocked some systems offline.

What did they say?: Apple Podcasts now offers auto-generated transcripts as part of changes in iOS 17.4. It’s only in four languages currently. If you’re like me and miss portions of your true crime stories because you’re deep in story-writing mode, at least you can better find where you left off.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Over on TechCrunch+, Haje Jan Kamps dissects Doola’s $1 million strategic investment deck and tells us how the business-in-a-box startup did.

On the pods

This week on Equity, Plural VC announces a new fund, Fantuan teams up with Chowbus, and Vroom leaves the car-selling business. We’ll also chat through what’s happening over at Brex and why edtech might not be in the dire straits that many presume that it is. Listen here.

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