Australia bans alleged Russian leader of global ransomware group LockBit | TikTok and ByteDance sue US to block law forcing sale of the app | Microsoft leads the charge in combating AI-driven election
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Australia has imposed financial sanctions and a travel ban on Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, a senior leader of the LockBit ransomware group, in coordination with the UK and US, due to his role in a significant number of ransomware attacks in the country. The Guardian
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government to challenge a new law that requires them to sell TikTok by January 19, 2025, or face a ban in the U.S. They argue the law infringes on free speech and is technically unfeasible, as it would also prohibit the sale of TikTok’s crucial recommendation algorithm. The Guardian
Microsoft has evolved from a traditional tech company to a leader in fighting AI-driven disinformation, developing tools to detect deepfakes and other AI-generated misinformation that could impact elections globally. This is part of their broader commitment to responsibly manage AI's influence on democracy. POLITICO
Australia
Australia bans alleged Russian leader of global ransomware group LockBit
The Guardian
An alleged leader of the international ransomware group LockBit has been hit with financial sanctions and banned from travelling to Australia. The Australian government named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, a Russian citizen, as having a “senior leadership role” in a criminal group that supplied a global network of hackers with the tools and infrastructure to carry out online attacks. The announcement was made overnight in co-ordination with authorities in the UK and the US. LockBit was behind 18% of reported Australian ransomware attacks in 2022-23 and targeted 119 people in Australia, the government said.
US, UK police identify and charge Russian leader of LockBit ransomware gang
TechCrunch
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
The identity of the leader of one of the most infamous ransomware groups in history has finally been revealed. On Tuesday, a coalition of law enforcement led by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency announced that Russian national, Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, 31, is the person behind the nickname LockBitSupp, the administrator and developer of the LockBit ransomware. The U.S. Department of Justice also announced the indictment of Khoroshev, accusing him of computer crimes, fraud and extortion. “Today we are going a step further, charging the individual who we allege developed and administered this malicious cyber scheme, which has targeted over 2,000 victims and stolen more than $100 million in ransomware payments,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was quoted as saying in the announcement.Cyber sanction imposed on Russian citizen for ransomware activity
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Minister for Foreign Affairs Senator the Hon Penny Wong
Australia has imposed a targeted financial sanction and travel ban on Russian citizen Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev for his senior leadership role in the LockBit ransomware group. This is the second use of Australia's autonomous cyber sanctions framework and part of ongoing coordinated international law enforcement action. Australia continues to experience an increase in persistent and pervasive ransomware activity by cyber criminals across Australian critical infrastructure, government, industry and community sectors.
Quantum of silence
Lowy Institute
Brendan Walker-Munro
For most people, quantum computers are the stuff of science fiction. Based on shooting microwave photons at “qubits”, quantum computers are estimated to be far more powerful than any other computing system ever invented. So much so that cybersecurity experts are warning of an impending “Q Day”, where a functioning quantum computer renders the encrypted systems we use for banking, telecommunications and the military all but obsolete. Foreign spies are already after bleeding-edge quantum secrets in the United States, so it doesn’t seem a stretch to imagine the same thing occurring in Australia. But quantum computers aren’t science fiction. Not only are they a key deliverable under Pillar 2 of AUKUS – the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States – they are being built right now.
China
Despite international hires, TikTok is Chinese at its core
Rest of World
Caiwei Chen and Viola Zhou
Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China, is highly profitable, and ByteDance has been transferring managers from Douyin to the U.S. to try to replicate success for TikTok. Current and former TikTok employees say Chinese executives, instead of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, are making key decisions. Experts say close ties between TikTok and ByteDance call into question whether TikTok could be considered a separate entity, making a potential sale unfeasible.
China's Nio turns to rival BYD to power new EV brand
Reuters
China electric vehicle maker Nio (9866.HK), opens new tab has struck a deal with larger rival BYD to source batteries for an EV brand priced at a lower range that aims to compete with Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. The agreement marks a win for BYD, which has been looking to expand its revenue beyond EV sales under its own brand. It also shows the impact of unrelenting competition over the price of new EVs in China's market, and batteries, the largest single cost in a new vehicle.
USA
TikTok and ByteDance sue US to block law forcing sale of the app
The Guardian
Kari Paul
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have sued to block a law signed by Joe Biden just weeks ago that would force the sale of the short video app or ban it from the US. The companies filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the US government in the court of appeals for the District of Columbia, arguing the law is unconstitutional and violates free speech protections. Signed by the president on 24 April as part of a broader foreign aid package, the law gives China’s ByteDance until 19 January 2025 to sell TikTok to an approved buyer. If it does not, the US would prohibit app stores from offering TikTok and bar internet hosting services from supporting TikTok.
US revokes some export licenses for China's Huawei
Reuters
Alexandra Alper and David Shepardson
The U.S. on Tuesday said it revoked some licenses that allow companies to ship goods, such as chips, to sanctioned Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies. The move comes after the release last month of Huawei's first AI-enabled laptop, the MateBook X Pro powered by Intel's (INTC.O), opens new tab new Core Ultra 9 processor. The laptop launch drew fire from Republican lawmakers, who suggested the Commerce Department had given the green light to Intel to sell the chip to Huawei.
NZ & Pacific Islands
A digital Fiji
The Fiji Times
Meri Radinibaravi
Fiji has been actively engaged in digital initiatives to transform Government services and how the Government conducts its business,” Permanent Secretary for Trade and Communications, Shaheen Ali said in his opening speech at the Cybersecurity Forum in Suva on Monday. “These initiatives have the primary objective of bringing government services closer to people, as well as instilling efficiency in the facilitation of government services and transactions.
Europe
EU’s Starlink rival triggers big Brussels-Berlin bust-up
POLITICO
Joshua Posaner
EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton slapped down a last-ditch German effort to suspend the IRIS2 satellite communications network — a European rival to Elon Musk's Starlink system. Germany's Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, who also serves as economy and climate minister, wants to delay the launch due to worries over what he called an “exorbitant” price tag — though the final cost is expected to be less than Habeck's forecasted €12 billion — and German concern over a likely French tilt in how the contracts will be doled out.
UK
UK armed forces’ personal data hacked in MoD breach
The Guardian
Tom Ambrose
The Ministry of Defence has suffered a significant data breach and the personal information of UK military personnel has been hacked. A third-party payroll system used by the MoD, which includes names and bank details of current and past members of the armed forces, was targeted in the attack. A very small number of addresses may also have been accessed. The department took immediate action and took the external network, operated by a contractor, offline.
Africa
Nigeria sets dangerous precedent by detaining Binance execs, CEO says
Reuters
Macdonald Dzirutwe
The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance on Tuesday accused Nigeria of setting a dangerous precedent after its executives were invited to the African country and then detained as part of a crackdown on crypto. Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange and two of its executives face separate trials on tax evasion and money laundering, which the company is challenging. CEO Richard Teng said in a statement it was time to speak out against the detention of Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen and Binance head of financial crime compliance.
Gender & Women in Tech
Meet the woman who showed President Biden ChatGPT—and helped set the course for AI
WIRED
Steven Levy
One day in March 2023, Arati Prabhakar brought a laptop into the Oval Office and showed the future to Joe Biden. Six months later, the president issued a sweeping executive order that set a regulatory course for AI. This all happened because ChatGPT had stunned the world. In an instant it became very, very obvious that the United States needed to speed up its efforts to regulate the AI industry—and adopt policies to take advantage of it. While the potential benefits were unlimited (Social Security customer service that works!), so were the potential downsides, like floods of disinformation or even, in the view of some, human extinction. Someone had to demonstrate that to the president. The job fell to Prabhakar, because she is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and holds cabinet status as the president’s chief science and technology adviser; she’d already been methodically educating top officials about the transformative power of AI. But she also has the experience and bureaucratic savvy to make an impact with the most powerful person in the world.
Big Tech
Microsoft goes from bad boy to top cop in the age of AI
POLITICO
Mark Scott
Juan Lavista Ferres, Microsoft’s chief data scientist, explains how well he did on the deepfake detection quiz that his team designed, and why people, and especially computer scientists, should be aware of how quickly the technology is evolving. Stepping into this quagmire is Microsoft — once known as the boring old guard of Big Tech compared with newer kids on the block like Google, Facebook and, most recently, TikTok. In the era of AI, it now finds itself resurgent. Alongside efforts to use artificial intelligence to find new cures for cancer and combat climate change, his small engineering team has another job: figuring out how to detect AI-powered deepfake videos, audio clips, and images bombarding elections worldwide.
Moldova fights to free itself from Russia’s AI-powered disinformation machine
POLITICO
Mark Scott
In the closing days of 2023, Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu did something bizarre: She banned people from drinking a popular berry-infused tea. The grainy video first appeared on Telegram, and then quickly across Facebook, just before New Year’s celebrations. It purportedly showed Sandu mocking the country’s poor by outlawing the picking of rose hip, a wild berry used in a traditional Yuletide drink. Sandu’s apparent reason for the ban: protecting the environment.Anatomy of a scroll: Inside TikTok’s AI-powered algorithms
POLITICO
Mark Scott, Giovanna Coi and Giulia Poloni
When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, many sought updates from their main source for news: social media. But unlike previous global conflicts, where the digital discourse was dominated by Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), the ongoing Middle East crisis has seen people flock to TikTok, in their millions, to relate news and express opinions. Even as the video-sharing app’s popularity has ballooned, the inner workings of its complex, artificial intelligence-powered algorithms remain a mystery.
Microsoft creates top secret generative AI service for US spies
Bloomberg
Katrina Manson
Microsoft Corp. has deployed a generative AI model entirely divorced from the internet, saying US intelligence agencies can now safely harness the powerful technology to analyze top-secret information. It’s the first time a major large language model has operated fully separated from the internet, a senior executive at the US company said. Most AI models including OpenAI’s ChatGPT rely on cloud services to learn and infer patterns from data, but Microsoft wanted to deliver a truly secure system to the US intelligence community.
Google releases new tool to enable Australians to find their personal information and request removal
The Guardian
Josh Taylor
Google has released a new tool that enables Australian users to easily find search results containing their personal information and request its removal. The “results about you” tool, available for the first time from Tuesday to coincide with Privacy Awareness Week, allows users to see how they show up in search results. They can then request the removal of results that contain personally identifiable information – such as phone numbers, emails or home addresses – via the Google app.
Amazon invests $12b in S’pore operations and cloud infrastructure, launches AI training scheme
The Straits Times
Osmond Chia
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is set to make one of the largest investments yet in digital infrastructure in Singapore, with $12 billion over the next four years going into cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) projects, as well as expanding its operations here. It will also helm a series of workshops with at least 100 enterprises here to help drive AI adoption. The company announced at the AWS Summit held at Marina Bay Sands on May 7 that the investment brings the company’s total sum poured into Singapore to $23.5 billion.
Artificial Intelligence
Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business
MIT Technology Review
Zeyi Yang
Once a week, Sun Kai has a video call with his mother. He opens up about work, the pressures he faces as a middle-aged man, and thoughts that he doesn’t even discuss with his wife. His mother will occasionally make a comment, like telling him to take care of himself—he’s her only child. But mostly, she just listens. That’s because Sun’s mother died five years ago. And the person he’s talking to isn’t actually a person, but a digital replica he made of her—a moving image that can conduct basic conversations. They’ve been talking for a few years now. After she died of a sudden illness in 2019, Sun wanted to find a way to keep their connection alive. So he turned to a team at Silicon Intelligence, an AI company based in Nanjing, China, that he cofounded in 2017. He provided them with a photo of her and some audio clips from their WeChat conversations. While the company was mostly focused on audio generation, the staff spent four months researching synthetic tools and generated an avatar with the data Sun provided. Then he was able to see and talk to a digital version of his mom via an app on his phone.
Meta’s AI tools for advertisers can now create full new images, not just new backgrounds
TechCrunch
Sarah Perez
Meta is rolling out an expanded set of generative AI tools for advertisers, after first announcing a set of AI features last October. Now, instead of only being able to create different backgrounds for a product image, advertisers can also request full image variations, which offer AI-inspired ideas for the overall photo, including riffs that update the photo’s subject or product being advertised. In one example, Meta shows how an existing ad creative showing a cup of coffee sitting outdoors next to coffee beans could be modified to present the cup, from a different angle, in front of lush greenery and coffee beans, evoking imagery reminiscent of a coffee farm.
OpenAI says it’s building a tool to let content creators ‘opt out’ of AI training
TechCrunch
Kyle Wiggers
OpenAI says that it’s developing a tool to let creators better control how their content’s used in training generative AI. The tool, called Media Manager, will allow creators and content owners to identify their works to OpenAI and specify how they want those works to be included or excluded from AI research and training. The goal is to have the tool in place by 2025, OpenAI says, as the company works with “creators, content owners and regulators” toward a standard — perhaps through the industry steering committee it recently joined.
AI system to protect athletes from online abuse during Paris 2024
International Olympic Committee
A new AI-powered monitoring service will protect athletes and officials from online abuse at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 this summer. Following the launch of the Olympic AI Agenda, which outlines the envisioned impact that artificial intelligence can deliver for the Olympic Movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is demonstrating how AI can improve safeguarding in sport. Paris 2024 will mark the first time that AI will be in use to provide safe online spaces for such a large number of athletes competing in so many sports at the same time.
Events & Podcasts
The Sydney Dialogue
ASPI
The Sydney Dialogue was created to help bring together governments, businesses and civil society to discuss and progress policy options. We will forecast the technologies of the next decade that will change our societies, economies and national security, prioritising speakers and delegates who are willing to push the envelope. We will promote diverse views that stimulate real conversations about the best ways to seize opportunities and minimise risks.
JoiningFORCES
ASPI
The JoiningFORCES conference will explore ways to bridge national and international boundaries to deliver more joint, collective and effective defence. It will bring together government ministers, senior defence officials, leading industry figures, and international experts across the two-day event and formal dinner. We will also use collaborative wargaming and scenario exercise techniques to generate insights on enhancing regional deterrence. Our focus will be on strategic and operational level challenges and will consider the vital role of industry in delivering capability at the speed needed to meet the strategic threats Australia faces.
Jobs
China Analyst or Senior Analyst
ASPI
ASPI has an exciting opportunity for an analyst or senior analyst to explore China's evolving foreign and security policy, political economy and impact on the Indo-Pacific and the world. ASPI’s China analysts conduct rigorous data-driven research, publish impactful reports that shape the public policy discourse and contribute to the wide catalogue of influential China work published by ASPI. The difference between the analyst and senior analyst levels will depend on experience level and demonstration of past work. The closing date for applications is 10 May 2024– an early application is advised as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if suitable applications are received.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.