Australian firms ‘at risk’ under AUKUS, report warns | Israeli spyware firm NSO Group drags researchers to court | Labor goes to war with Meta in far-reaching inquiry
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Australia’s defence sector risks being “crushed” by AUKUS unless the federal government dramatically lifts R&D funding and throws its support behind the industry’s small and medium enterprises. The Australian
Read ASPI’s report here.
In 2019, Citizen Lab reported finding dozens of cases in which Pegasus was used to target the phones of journalists and human rights defenders via a WhatsApp security vulnerability. Now NSO is trying to use a lawsuit to learn “how Citizen Lab conducted its analysis”. The Intercept
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk could be called on to face federal parliament as Labor launches a far-reaching inquiry into the negative effects of social media, and Meta’s refusal to pay Australian news publishers for their content. The Australian Financial Review
ASPI
AUKUS Pillar 2 critical pathways: a road map to enabling international collaboration
ASPI
George Henneke & Roland Stephens
The AUKUS trilateral partnership presents Australia with an unprecedented opportunity to achieve national-security goals that have eluded it for decades. It could offer access to cutting-edge technologies. AUKUS partner nations implement operational and regulatory frameworks to co-produce, co-field and continuously enhance world-leading national defence capabilities in critical technology areas.
Australian firms ‘at risk’ under AUKUS, report warns
The Australian
Ben Packham
Australia’s defence sector risks being “crushed” by AUKUS unless the federal government dramatically lifts R&D funding and throws its support behind the industry’s small and medium enterprises. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute study on AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” advanced technology partnership says the agreement is full of promise but major reforms will be needed to help Australian firms compete against cashed-up US rivals.
Misinformation spreads faster when scammers use artificial intelligence
Matangi Tonga
Katalina Siasau
Tongan media representatives held discussions around the impacts of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation faced by Pacific Island communities, at a workshop hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Royal Oceania Institute. ASPI Senior Analyst, Blake Johnson led a discussion around the terminology: “disinformation”, “misinformation”, and “malinformation”. Blake said that scams and disinformation may be generated by fraudsters using AI. This a growing concern worldwide and has also reached the Pacific Islands. It can help disinformation spreaders use a variety of tactics to achieve their objectives much faster and with more effectiveness.
Training Program for Tonga: “Disinformation: Government and Media Challenges”
Royal Oceania Institute
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Royal Oceania Institute held a two day conference with the media, members of parliament and government discussing misinformation, disinformation and the challenges and opportunities facing Pacific Island governments. The ‘ASPI-ROI Pacific Islands misinformation and disinformation workshops’ are a new collaborative step forward, building on similar workshops that have previously been held in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tonga with government and media.
World
Israeli spyware firm NSO Group drags researchers to court
The Intercept
Shawn Musgrave
For years, cybersecurity researchers at Citizen Lab have monitored Israeli spyware firm NSO Group and its banner product, Pegasus. In 2019, Citizen Lab reported finding dozens of cases in which Pegasus was used to target the phones of journalists and human rights defenders via a WhatsApp security vulnerability. Now NSO, which is blacklisted by the U.S. government for selling spyware to repressive regimes, is trying to use a lawsuit over the WhatsApp exploit to learn “how Citizen Lab conducted its analysis”.
Australia
Labor goes to war with Meta in far-reaching inquiry
The Australian Financial Review
Tom McIlroy
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk could be called on to face federal parliament as Labor launches a far-reaching inquiry into the negative effects of social media, and Meta’s refusal to pay Australian news publishers for their content. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said Labor would set up a joint House of Representatives and Senate committee on the influence of social media in Australia, noting “the negative impacts these companies can have on our society”.
Musk widens legal fight with Australia as Labor pushes social media probe
The Sydney Morning Herald
Paul Sakkal
Social media giants will be called before a parliamentary inquiry into the societal damage done by Facebook, TikTok and other platforms as Elon Musk expands his legal challenge against Australia’s online watchdog. Musk’s company X, formerly known as Twitter, this week launched a case in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal testing the merits of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant’s order to remove videos of the April stabbing of a Sydney priest.
Australian MPs urged to use burner phones in India as spying concerns grow on Narendra Modi’s Government
The Nightly
Latika Bourke
DFAT has advised prominent Australians, including MPs, to take burner phones with them when they travel to India. It is the same advice given to MPs and VIPs travelling to China and Ukraine over fears that in those locations their phones could be hacked by the Chinese and Russians. The revelation shows underlying signs of distrust between Australia and the Hindu nationalist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after it was only recently revealed that the nest of spies that intelligence agency ASIO disrupted and kicked out of Australia in 2020 was Indian.
The cable shortage: Plugging in offshore wind farms
The Interpreter
Cynthia Mehboob
Australia’s late entry into the offshore wind market is a welcome development for clean energy advocates. The federal government this month issued what it has called the first round of feasibility licenses to six companies to explore offshore wind farm projects off the coast of Victoria. Yet amid this promising development, the scarcity of undersea power cables poses a looming challenge for the industry – not just their installation, technically difficult as that can be, but also their protection.
Google Cloud accidentally deletes UniSuper’s online account due to ‘unprecedented misconfiguration’
The Guardian
Josh Taylor
More than half a million UniSuper fund members went a week with no access to their superannuation accounts after a “one-of-a-kind” Google Cloud “misconfiguration” led to the financial services provider’s private cloud account being deleted, Google and UniSuper have revealed. The outage was caused by a misconfiguration that resulted in UniSuper’s cloud account being deleted, something that had never happened to Google Cloud before.
China
China’s local governments swap debt for data as pressure builds to relieve burdens
South China Morning Post
Amanda Lee
China’s most indebted local governments have seized on a novel method to relieve some of their burdens – turning vast stores of data into credits on their balance sheets. The unusual approach, tested in certain localities and covering a small share of their total obligations, raises legality and sustainability questions even as it presents an enticing escape route. Beijing has stepped up its supervision of local governments over the past two years, as a prolonged downturn in the property market and enormous pandemic control expenditures have weighed down regional finances.
Huawei's new phone uses more China-made parts, memory chip
Reuters
David Kirton & Brenda Goh
Huawei's latest high-end phone features more Chinese suppliers, including a new flash memory storage chip and an improved chip processor, a teardown analysis showed, pointing to the progress China is making towards technology self-sufficiency.
China’s use of RISC-V chip standard faces headwinds amid US scrutiny and Google’s end of Android support
South China Morning Post
Kelly Le
China’s strengthened push to use RISC-V, an open-source chip-design architecture, to reduce reliance on foreign technologies is facing new challenges amid scrutiny by the United States and Google’s move to stop supporting the standard on Android. As its tech war with the US escalates, China has been investing heavily on RISC-V as an alternative to the ecosystems of British semiconductor design giant Arm and US firm Intel for designing specialised chips used in AI and mobile devices.
USA
FBI warns that foreign adversaries could use AI to spread disinformation about US elections
AP News
Eric Tucker
The FBI is concerned that foreign adversaries could deploy artificial intelligence as a means to interfere in American elections and spread disinformation, a senior official said Thursday, describing the technology as an area “that’s probably going to see growth over the coming years”. The threat is more than theoretical given the prevalence of AI deepfakes and robocalls and the way such technology has already surfaced in politics.
With nation-state threats in mind, nearly 70 software firms agree to Secure by Design pledge
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
The nation’s top cybersecurity agency said 68 of the world’s leading software manufacturers have signed on to a voluntary pledge to design products that have security built in from the beginning. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced the first round of commitments at the RSA Conference on Wednesday, with Director Jen Easterly warning that it was necessary because of widespread hacking campaigns by nation-states like China.
In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024
The Washington Post
Sarah Ellison & Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
Over two days, election workers from around the state maneuvered through a training exercise involving the kinds of attacks generated by artificial intelligence that they might face in this politically competitive state during the coming election cycle. They tackled situations that plunged them into AI-generated scenarios ranging from law enforcement operations to attempts to infiltrate technology systems.
Americas
Mexico is in a crisis. Political candidates are busy dancing on TikTok
Rest of World
Lorena Ríos
With only a few weeks to go before elections, candidates are pulling out their best dance moves. Awkwardly performed choreographies, viral memes, and TikTok challenges have been at the center of political campaigns. Candidates “are too caught up in the need to be present on social media, to be trending”, said Alejandra López, a political scientist at Anáhuac University. But, she added, “a like is not a vote”.
Canadian province's networks hit by 'sophisticated cybersecurity incidents'
The Record by Recorded Future
Alexander Martin
British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, said that it had identified “sophisticated cybersecurity incidents” involving government networks. In a statement, the province’s premier, David Eby, stressed there was currently no evidence that sensitive information had been compromised. Investigations were ongoing, and more work was needed “to determine what information may have been accessed”, he said on Wednesday evening.
North Asia
Robot sommeliers and baristas go to work in labor-starved South Korea
Nikkei Asia
Nami Matsuura
As South Korea grapples with a rapidly shrinking workforce, robotics companies are looking to the service sector in hopes of plugging labor shortages in a range of fields from restaurants to health care. South Korea leads the world in robot density, with 1,012 robots for every 10,000 workers as of 2022, the International Federation of Robotics reports. The figure is well above second-ranked Singapore's 730, and double or triple the numbers in Germany, Japan, China and the U.S.
Southeast Asia
Why Southeast Asia became a spyware hotspot
Rest of World
Russel Brandom
Last week, Amnesty International launched a new front in that fight with a new report calling out Indonesia’s national police and federal cybersecurity agency for stockpiling spyware. Nailing down the actual purchases meant following a wave of vendors and intermediaries, but researchers claim that the tools were being used against Indonesians.
Cambodia, Thailand draw $320m in investments from Japan's MinebeaMitsumi
Nikkei Asia
Takura Hosoda
Japanese parts supplier MinebeaMitsumi plans to invest nearly 50 billion yen ($321 million) to build a factory in Cambodia and increase solar power output at plants in Thailand, Nikkei has learned. The fresh investments in Southeast Asia will prepare to meet growing demand from the auto and other industries while expanding the company's use of renewable energy.
India and ASEAN rise in supply chain priority, global survey shows
Nikkei Asia
Dylan Loh
Global business leaders are increasingly looking to India and Southeast Asia as alternative supply chain destinations while trade relations between China and the U.S. deteriorate, a poll by PwC published Thursday shows. At the same time, these leaders will not disengage from the two major powers in the coming years, the survey, targeting 150 senior executives across Asia, Europe and North America, shows.
South & Central Asia
Groww joins the first wave of Indian startups moving domiciles back home from US
TechCrunch
Manish Singh
Groww, an Indian investment app, has become one of the first startups from the country to shift its domicile back to India from the U.S., signaling a broader trend among the local startup community. A growing number of Indian startups, particularly in the fintech sector, are preparing to relocate their overseas holding entities to India in a bid to align with evolving local regulations, and to pursue domestic stock listings.
Europe
Poland says it was targeted by Russian military intelligence hackers
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
Russian state-sponsored hackers have targeted Polish government institutions in a recent espionage campaign, according to a new report. Poland’s computer emergency response team, CERT-PL, said on Wednesday that it had observed a large-scale malware campaign, likely carried out by the hacker group APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, associated with Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.
Big Tech
Baidu executive tells staff: ‘I’m not your mum’
Financial Times
Ryan McMorrow & Nian Liu
The head of public relations at Chinese search giant Baidu has created her own PR crisis after posting several videos on social media demeaning staff, in the latest example of the sometimes brutal workplace practices in China’s tech sector. The executive posted the videos on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, intending the clips to serve as examples to her team of how to use social media to promote Baidu. Instead, they have reignited criticism of the workplace culture at Chinese tech companies.
Baidu PR chief who sparked PR nightmare over workplace culture is out, state media reports
CNN
Nectar Gan
The PR chief of Baidu has reportedly left the Chinese search engine just days after she sparked a public relations crisis with controversial comments endorsing a tough workplace culture. Qu Jing had left her position as vice president and head of communications, the Economic Review, a state-run financial news outlet, reported late Thursday, citing Baidu insiders.
TikTok to automatically label AI-generated user content in global first
Financial Times
Madhumita Murgia & Hannah Murphy
TikTok will become the first social media platform to automatically label some artificial intelligence-generated content, as rapid advances in generative AI deepen concerns about the spread of online disinformation and deepfakes. Online groups, such as Facebook owner Meta and TikTok, already require users to disclose if realistic images, audio or videos are made through AI software.
TikTok to expand e-commerce business into Mexico and major Western European markets amid scrutiny in the US, EU
South China Morning Post
Coco Feng
TikTok is poised to expand its e-commerce operations into Mexico, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, as the ByteDance-owned short video platform remains under scrutiny in the United States and the European Union. The global hit social media platform has started to invite merchants for a beta run of TikTok Shop in those markets before the in-app feature’s expected official launch this summer, according to three people familiar with the matter.
ByteDance offloads gaming unit to Tencent-backed firm in sign of ongoing industry consolidation
South China Morning Post
Coco Feng
TikTok owner ByteDance, which began a retreat from video gaming last year, has sold a third studio to a Tencent-backed company, as the industry continues its consolidation amid ongoing weakness in consumer spending and regulatory uncertainties. ByteDance has agreed to sell C4Games to a subsidiary of China Ruyi Holdings, a film and game production firm nearly 22 per cent owned by video gaming giant Tencent Holdings, for 259 million yuan (US$35.8 million), Beijing-based China Ruyi said in a Tuesday filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Artificial Intelligence
Digital recreations of dead people need urgent regulation, AI ethicists say
The Guardian
Alex Hern
Digital recreations of dead people are on the cusp of reality and urgently need regulation, AI ethicists have argued, warning “deadbots” could cause psychological harm to, and even “haunt”, their creators and users.
Misc
‘BookTok Bookshelves’ to launch in cities around the UK
The Guardian
Ella Creamer
TikTok is partnering with the National Literacy Trust to place bookshelves in 11 UK areas identified as lacking in literary provision. While TikTok will be funding the initiative by paying for the books and shelves, NLT youth volunteers will be choosing selections of titles for the shelves. TikTok is “proud” to be working with the NLT to “harness the appeal of TikTok and its ability to connect and inspire young people, to motivate reading for pleasure, striving to boost literacy levels by increasing access to books across the UK”, said Ali Law, TikTok’s director of public policy and government affairs, UK and Ireland.
‘Destruction of the human experience’: Apple iPad ad prompts online backlash
The Guardian
Dan Milmo
Apple has faced an online backlash over an advert for its new iPad that features an industrial-sized hydraulic press crushing a collection of objects and gadgets including musical instruments and books. The implication that an iPad can squeeze humanity’s cultural prowess into an object with a depth of 5mm was viewed differently by commentators on social media.
Research
Reverse Dependency: Making Europe’s Digital Technological Strengths Indispensable to China
Deutsche Gesellschaft für auswärtige Politik
Tim Rühlig
This report uses 12 case studies to analyse reverse dependencies of the People’s Republic of China on the European Union and the United Kingdom. In adapting to growing geopolitical competition over digital technology, the EU and the UK are striving for economic security and technological sovereignty. European policies focus on reducing critical over-dependencies on China. This de-risking is a necessary process of adaptation to the new geopolitical realities. However, current de-risking policy ignores the fact that it is virtually impossible to reduce strategic dependencies to a degree that provides the economic security and technological sovereignty the EU and the UK seek.
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.
Mentoring Matters – Women in Security
The event with feature a cyber update and keynote address from the Hon Clare O’Neil, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Cyber Security. This will be followed by a panel discussion with government and industry leaders exploring themes of security, mentoring, career pathways, workforce uplift and diversity. The event will also include networking and a 2-course lunch.
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.