Bing’s censorship in China even more extreme than Chinese companies’ | Meta starts testing user-created AI chatbots on Instagram | Russian propaganda network promoting AI-manipulated Biden video
Good morning. It's Friday 28th June.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.
Follow us on Twitter and on LinkedIn.
Bing’s censorship rules in China are so stringent that even mentioning President Xi Jinping leads to a complete block of translation results, according to new research by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. The institute found that Microsoft censors its Bing translation results more than top Chinese services, including Baidu Translate and Tencent Machine Translation. Rest of World
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that the company will begin to surface AI characters made by creators through Meta AI studio on Instagram. The social media company’s announcement comes on the same day as a16z-backed chatbot company Character. In a post on his broadcast channel, Zuckerberg noted that these chatbots will be clearly marked as AI so users are aware. TechCrunch
In recent weeks, as so-called cheapfake video clips suggesting President Joe Biden is unfit for office have gone viral on social media, a Kremlin-affiliated disinformation network has been promoting a parody music video featuring Biden wearing a diaper and being pushed around in a wheelchair. WIRED
Australia
Meta calls in global executive to front Labor's social media committee
Capital Brief
John Buckley
Meta has called in a global executive to front a parliamentary committee focused on its move to end news deals, as Labor nears a decision on whether to pull the trigger on designating the company under the news media bargaining code. Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety at Meta, and regional policy head Mia Garlick will kick off the committee's Friday hearings, offering Meta’s most anticipated public commentary on Australian laws in years.
Adelaide's Space Machines Company strikes deal with India for next satellite launch
Capital Brief
Dan Von Boom
Space Machines Company, an Australian startup that bills itself as “roadside assistance for space”, has struck a deal with India to launch its next satellite in 2026. Its first satellite, Optimus, launched in March onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. The sequel to Optimus will be bigger and heavier, and will be the sole cargo taken into space by a rocket from NewSpace India, the government-operated commercial arm of India’s space agency. The partnership is significant not only for the startup but for Australia and India, which are ramping up collaboration on interstellar matters, said founder and CEO Rajat Kulshrestha.
China
Microsoft Bing’s censorship in China is even “more extreme” than Chinese companies’
Rest of World
Joanna Chiu
Bing’s censorship rules in China are so stringent that even mentioning President Xi Jinping leads to a complete block of translation results, according to new research by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab that has been shared exclusively with Rest of World. The institute found that Microsoft censors its Bing translation results more than top Chinese services, including Baidu Translate and Tencent Machine Translation. Bing became the only major foreign translation and search engine service available in China after Google withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010.
China's subsea cable drive defies U.S. sanctions
Nikkei Asia
Cheng Ting-fang, Lauly Li, Tsubasa Suruga and Shunsuke Tabeta
For Chinese undersea cable maker Wuhan FiberHome International Technologies, being banned by the U.S. government is nothing to worry about. It has, in fact, been good for business. The U.S. and a handful of its allies have dominated the undersea cable market for decades, and Washington is pushing hard for “clean” communications networks free of Chinese involvement, citing national security risks.
New tactic in China’s information war: harassing a critic’s child in the U.S.
The New York Times
Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu
Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese writer who now lives in exile in the suburbs of Philadelphia, has regularly criticized China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s reaction of late has been severe, with crude and ominously personal attacks online. A covert propaganda network linked to the country’s security services has barraged not just Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at both Clemson University and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
China reveals Ding Xuexiang as head of Communist Party science and technology body
South China Morning Post
William Zheng
Top-ranking Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang has been revealed as head of the ruling Communist Party’s Central Science and Technology Commission. State news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday that Ding addressed the second plenary session of the National Science and Technology Conference in Beijing as head of the new commission, as well as in his capacity as a Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) member. The commission was established in March last year – as part of a far-reaching overhaul of government and party organs – to oversee China’s drive towards self-reliance in science and technology, but its leadership was unknown until now.
USA
A Russian propaganda network is promoting an AI-manipulated Biden video
WIRED
David Gilbert
In recent weeks, as so-called cheapfake video clips suggesting President Joe Biden is unfit for office have gone viral on social media, a Kremlin-affiliated disinformation network has been promoting a parody music video featuring Biden wearing a diaper and being pushed around in a wheelchair.
SCOTUS rules that US government can continue talking to social media companies
WIRED
Vittoria Elliott
Today, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the plaintiffs did not present enough evidence to prove that they had standing to sue over claims that the government violated the First Amendment by communicating with social media companies about misleading and harmful content on their platforms.
America’s drinking water is facing attack, with links back to China, Russia and Iran
CNBC
Trevor Laurence Jockims
The city of Wichita, Kansas, recently had an experience that’s become all too common — its water system was hacked. The cyberattack, which targeted water metering, billing and payment processing, followed the targeting of water utilities across the U.S. in recent years. Taking out critical national infrastructure has become a top priority for foreign-linked cybercriminals. “All drinking water and wastewater systems are at risk — large and small, urban and rural,” an EPA spokesman said.
Americas
Chinese telecoms giant Huawei signs deal to train thousands of Peruvians in new technology
South China Morning Post
Kawala Xie
Peru has signed a deal with the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies to train thousands of its citizens in new technology. President Dina Boluarte visited Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen on Wednesday as part of a week-long visit to China designed to attract more investment. The Peruvian president’s office said she had signed an agreement to train 20,000 young professionals, women and entrepreneurs from small and medium-sized entrepreneurs in new technologies, especially in artificial intelligence.
North Asia
Top chip packager ASE to build additional factories in U.S. and Mexico
Nikkei Asia
Cheng Ting-fang
Chip packaging and testing, once considered a less technologically demanding step in the chipmaking process, has become increasingly important as the industry seeks new ways to increase computing power. TSMC, Samsung Electronics and Intel are all betting big on advanced chip packaging to feed the AI boom.
Southeast Asia
Chinese APT behind cyberattacks on PH Coast Guard – DICT official
Rappler
A Chinese advanced persistent threat is behind the cyberattacks on the online sites of the Philippine Coast Guard, a Department of Information and Communications Technology official said on Wednesday, June 26. A Presidential Communications Office press statement quoted DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy saying this in an ambush interview in Malacañang on Wednesday. “The tactics, techniques and procedures, which mean the behavior of the attacker is very, very similar to APT41 which is a Chinese group,” he was quoted as saying
South & Central Asia
Thousands of Chinese tech workers fail to get Indian visas, industry says
Financial Times
John Reed
Thousands of Chinese engineers and technicians are struggling to obtain Indian visas, highlighting a bottleneck in the process and a potential hurdle in India’s push to become a major “China plus one” manufacturing nation. India in 2020 put in place some of Asia’s strictest curbs on Chinese business, against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and deadly border clashes in the Himalayas that killed at least 24 Indian and Chinese troops. The external affairs and home affairs ministries, which oversee visa provision in India, did not respond to requests for comment about the reported backlog.
Apple supplier Foxconn rejects married women from India iPhone jobs
Reuters
Praveen Paramasivam, Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra
Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple devices, has been excluding female candidates from assembly jobs at its flagship Indian smartphone plant because they are married. Both companies’ codes of conduct state that workers shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of marital status.
Indian temples are scanning visitors’ faces
Foreign Policy
Bibek Bhandari
The controversial Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain, and Venkateswara Swami Temple in Tirupati—located in north, central, and south India, respectively—have installed hundreds of cameras equipped with facial recognition technology, capturing the personal information of the tens of thousands of devotees who visit these temples every day. While the initiative has been touted as a technological marvel, critics fear that it could be a testing ground for mass surveillance and data harvesting in the absence of relevant laws in India.
Ukraine - Russia
$10M offered for Russian accused in ‘WhisperGate’ malware attack on Ukraine
The Washington Post
Katie Mettler
Federal authorities are offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on the whereabouts of a Russian national who they say is connected to a sprawling cybersecurity attack on Ukrainian government computer systems ahead of Russia’s invasion of the country. The planned attack, known as “WhisperGate,” also targeted one of Ukraine’s Central European ally nations and included attempted probes of U.S. government facilities in Maryland, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday morning.
The secret Telegram channels providing refuge for LGBTQ+ people in Russia
WIRED
Sassafras Lowrey
Last year, Russia enacted a law banning gender-affirming care. In March, the government added the “LGBT movement” to its list of extremist and terrorist organizations. It represents, says Ksen Pallegedara Murry, an Oregon-based family law attorney who works with LGBTQ+ clients and Russian immigrants, a “direct government campaign targeting the extermination of queers.” As authorities raid gay bars, queer Russians have moved off of open social networks and onto private Telegram chats to organize, socialize, and even find the support and resources necessary to flee.
UK
Ding dong drama: Video doorbells have UK election campaigners spooked
POLITICO
John Johnston
For decades, political campaigners have feared just three things: big dogs, blisters and bad weather. But with the explosion of video doorbell usage over the last few years, a new hi-tech threat has emerged for those pounding the pavements in pursuit of votes. Campaigners knocking on doors ahead of the British general election on July 4 have learned to watch their Ps and Qs, even before they come face to face with potential voters.
Big Tech
Meta starts testing user-created AI chatbots on Instagram
TechCrunch
Ivan Mehta
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that the company will begin to surface AI characters made by creators through Meta AI studio on Instagram. The social media company’s announcement comes on the same day as a16z-backed chatbot company Character. In a post on his broadcast channel, Zuckerberg noted that these chatbots will be clearly marked as AI so users are aware.
Amazon’s cloud unit conference interrupted by protest over Gaza
Bloomberg
Jamie Tarabay and Matt Day
A conference hosted by Amazon's cloud division was disrupted by protesters calling for an end to a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government that the company shares with Alphabet's Google. Dave Levy, an Amazon Web Services vice president who oversees public sector sales, was starting to speak Wednesday at the cloud unit’s conference in Washington when he was interrupted. A series of audience members, some holding signs, accused Amazon of complicity in genocide in Israel’s war in Gaza with Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and EU. The protesters were escorted out of the event space.
Amazon hits $2 trillion in value as AI frenzy fuels rally
Bloomberg
Carmen Reinicke
Amazon has reached a $2 trillion market valuation for the first time ever as an artificial intelligence-fueled rally pushed the tech giant deeper into record territory. Shares of the megacap technology company have gotten a lift over the past year as the company cut costs and restructured its business to better take advantage of the AI frenzy. In addition, its key Amazon Web Services business has shown signs of re-accelerating growth, a major point of optimism for investors.
Artificial Intelligence
When the terms of service change to make way for A.I. training
The New York Times
Eli Tan
Last July, Google made an eight-word change to its privacy policy that represented a significant step in its race to build the next generation of artificial intelligence. Buried thousands of words into its document, Google tweaked the phrasing for how it used data for its products, adding that public information could be used to train its A.I. chatbot and other services.
OpenAI’s CTO says AI tools can ‘expand our intelligence,’ but may cause some creative jobs to disappear
CNBC
Cheyenne DeVon
OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati says AI may help expand humans’ creativity — but the technology could wipe out some creative jobs as well. On June 19, Dartmouth College’s school of engineering held a discussion with Murati about the potential effects OpenAI’s tools, such as ChatGPT, may have on different industries. During the conversation, the Dartmouth alum was asked if they would be capable of writing scripts and making films.
AI can beat university students, study suggests
BBC
Ian Youngs
University exams taken by fake students using artificial intelligence beat those by real students and usually went undetected by markers, in a limited study. University of Reading researchers created 33 fictitious students and used AI tool ChatGPT to generate answers to module exams for an undergraduate psychology degree at the institution. They said the AI students' results were half a grade boundary higher on average than those of their real-life counterparts. And the AI essays "verged on being undetectable", with 94% not raising concerns with markers.
Research
ChamelGang & Friends | Cyberespionage Groups Attacking Critical Infrastructure with Ransomware
Sentinal Labs
Aleksandar Milenkoski & Julian-Ferdinand Vögele
Our findings indicate that ChamelGang, a suspected Chinese APT group, targeted the major Indian healthcare institution AIIMS and the Presidency of Brazil in 2022 using the CatB ransomware. Attribution information on these attacks has not been publicly released to date. ChamelGang also targeted a government organization in East Asia and critical infrastructure sectors, including an aviation organization in the Indian subcontinent.
CISA: Most critical open source projects not using memory safe code
Bleeping Computer
Bill Toulas
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has published research looking into 172 key open-source projects and whether they are susceptible to memory flaws. The report presents research examining 172 broadly deployed open-source projects, finding that over half contain memory-unsafe code.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.