US House of Representatives approves $1.9 billion in cybersecurity investments | German engines found in Chinese navy warships | Iraqi prime minister targeted in exploding drone assassination attempt
Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that will invest nearly $2 billion in cybersecurity efforts throughout the federal government. The Record by Recorded Future
Several types of Chinese navy warships are powered by engines that were either developed or built by German manufacturers, an investigation by public broadcaster ARD and the Welt am Sonntag newspaper revealed Saturday. Deutsche Welle
An exploding drone aimed at the Iraqi prime minister’s house has failed to kill him, the government has said… A security statement released by state-run media said the failed assassination attempt was with “a booby-trapped drone that tried to target his residence in the Green Zone”. The Guardian
ASPI ICPC
Fixing up carbon: add incentives and stir well
Australian Financial Review
In these pages this week, another group of security thinkers who fret about looming climate conflicts, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, wrote instead of the possibility that Australia’s outsize luck in resources matters might actually continue because of the climate crisis. We’ve profited in the past from dirty coal. But our other resources of wide open space, sunlight, and all the minerals needed for electrification might make us a clean power hub, especially for the energy-guzzling 5G, 6G, and digital and data metaverse-based global economy of the future.
Read Karly Winkler and Miah Hammond-Errey’s AFR opinion piece here
Chinese tennis star accuses former top Communist Party leader of sexual assault, triggering blanket censorship
CNN
Fergus Ryan talks to CNN about Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai's explosive #MeToo allegation against a high-level Party leader.
Australia
Australia's place in the contest for technological leadership
9DashLine
@jen_jackett
The recent announcement of the trilateral partnership ‘AUKUS’ and the first in-person Quadrilateral Security Dialogue leaders’ summit heralded a new phase in Australia’s response to an increasingly uncertain strategic environment... Specifically, these developments show how Australia can cooperate with trusted partners in high tech areas like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and space to support economic prosperity and national security, including to offset risks associated with China’s technological rise.
Quantum computers to run Sydney’s transport
The Sydney Morning Herald
@Rabe9
Cutting-edge quantum computing will one day run Sydney’s vast transport network under a world-first plan to use the technology that experts say can solve complex problems in seconds, rather than centuries.
NSW government supports development of undersea detection and communications capabilities
Defence Connect
NSW Minister for Industry and Trade Stuart Ayres has recently confirmed that the NSW government will support the development of integrated undersea acoustic communications and sensing technologies, aimed at supporting long-distance covert underwater communications.
China
DoD's 2021 China Military Power Report: How Advances in AI and Emerging Technologies Will Shape China’s Military
Council for Foreign Relations
@mchorowitz @lauren_a_kahn
China is leveraging emerging technologies such as autonomous systems, quantum, cyber and more to challenge U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific. The latest DoD report on Chinese military power explains what the PLA is doing.
Ignore China’s New Data Privacy Law at Your Peril
WIRED
@mattburgess1
The Personal Information Protection Law gives authorities the power to impose huge fines and blacklist companies. But the biggest impact may be felt outside the country.
Chinese State Firm Weighs Bid to Take Over SCMP From Alibaba
Bloomberg
@cocojournalist Dong Cao @ClaireYChe @shirleyZhaoXY
A company owned by the Chinese government is working on an offer to acquire Hong Kong’s influential South China Morning Post, according to people familiar with the matter. Bauhinia Culture (Hong Kong) Holdings Ltd. is interested in a deal with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that would see the city’s most prominent English-language newspaper join its stable of media properties, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.
How China’s tech bosses cashed out at the right time
Financial Times
@rwmcmorrow @EllieOlcott @imandylin2
When Xi complained in March that relentless home-schooling was a “stubborn disease” that was putting too much pressure on Chinese children and their parents, the heads of at least two Chinese tutoring companies started selling their shares in New York… The sale is among hundreds of records reviewed by the Financial Times that provide one of the first looks at how and when executives at China’s biggest New York-listed tech companies trade their shares.
Chinese intelligence officer convicted of stealing secrets from General Electric
Financial Times
@Dimi
An American federal jury has convicted a senior Chinese intelligence officer of trying to steal secrets from General Electric, the first time a Ministry of State Security official was extradited to the US for trial.
T-Day: The Battle for Taiwan
Reuters
@DavidLague3 @lightnosugar
China’s quest to rule Taiwan has already begun with a campaign of “gray-zone” warfare. Here is how military strategists believe the struggle might play out.
USA
House approves massive infrastructure plan that includes $1.9 billion for cybersecurity
The Record by Recorded Media
@martinmatishak
The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that will invest nearly $2 billion in cybersecurity efforts throughout the federal government.
Why cyber may define Biden’s first year in office
SC Magazine
@DerekDoesTech
At the head of it all is a White House that has approached policymaking over the past nine months as if it is more concerned about the cascading, cross-sectoral impacts of a major cyber incident than ruffling industry feathers around regulation.
Justice Dept. conducting cyber crackdown
AP News
@etuckerAP
The Justice Department is stepping up actions to combat ransomware and cybercrime through arrests and other actions, its No. 2 official told The Associated Press, as the Biden administration escalates its response to what it regards as an urgent economic and national security threat.
Amid national security concerns, US slaps overhead time limits on satellites
Breaking Defense
@Genevaexpat
The Commerce Department is placing new restrictions for how frequently US-operated mid- to high-resolution commercial remote sensing satellites can image any one spot on the Earth, prompted by concerns from the Defense Department and Intelligence Community over the potential impacts of repeated captures of key US national security facilities
Blacklisting this Israeli spyware firm is only a first step
The Washington Post
Now what about the rest of this sprawling and shadowy industry? Spyware has proved a threat to civil society around the globe. The de facto shunning of a particularly skilled purveyor is progress, but what’s really needed are hard and fast rules to check the proliferation of a technology ostensibly designed to catch criminals but all too commonly exploited to quash opposition.
Crypto Is Cool. Now Get on the Yacht.
The New York Times
@kevinroose
Officially, they were here for NFT. NYC, a conference devoted to the nonfungible token, or NFT, the blockchain-based collectible that has upended the cryptocurrency and art worlds this year... It was a coming-out party of sorts for the NFT community, which was born online and has only recently started to experiment with offline fun.
CFPB Takes Action to Stop False Identification by Background Screeners
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The CFPB today issued an advisory opinion affirming that consumer reporting companies, including tenant and employment screening companies, are violating the law if they engage in shoddy name-matching procedures.
There's nothing you can do': The Legacy of #PizzaGate
Southern Poverty Law Center
@MichaelEHayden
The online disinformation campaign now known as #Pizzagate, which extremists blasted into mainstream visibility on such sites as Twitter and Reddit, targeted Alefantis with a storm of harassment and lies, falsely suggesting that liberal elites abused children in the basement of his pizza restaurant. The #Pizzagate fable ultimately inspired a man to drive across state lines from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., to “save” fictitious victims.
1.8 TB of Police Helicopter Surveillance Footage Leaks Online
WIRED
@lilyhnewman
DDoSecrets published the trove Friday afternoon. Privacy advocates say it shows how pervasive law enforcement's eye has become, and how lax its data protection can be.
North Asia
Japan starts laying legal groundwork for TSMC subsidy
Nikkei Asia
Mayumi Hirosawa
The Japanese government will establish a legal framework for subsidizing new domestic plants for advanced semiconductors, starting with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s planned facility in Kumamoto Prefecture.
New Zealand & Pacific Islands
Intelligence Agencies Minister Andrew Little foreshadows announcement that will 'test' spy agency critics
Stuff
@thomasmanch
Intelligence Agencies Minister Andrew Little has decried the "extremes" of public debate about security issues, and foreshadowed an impending announcement that will "test" critics of the spy agencies. Little, in a speech to Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies on Thursday evening, said New Zealand was facing rapidly evolving terror, cyber, and foreign interference threats, and a more “robust” discussion about national security was needed.
Questions remain about what Telstra Digicel deal will mean for PNG consumers
Post-Courier
@ahawatson
On Monday this week, the Australian telecommunication company Telstra announced that it is going to purchase Digicel’s Pacific arm. That is, Digicel’s operations in six Pacific countries: Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Nauru and Tonga. But it will not be doing it alone.
UK
UK's Truss to visit southeast Asia to boost economic and security ties
Reuters
@kyliemaclellan
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will travel to Malaysia on Sunday as part of a week-long visit to southeast Asia aimed at deepening economic and security ties in the region, her office said... She will meet with the leaders and foreign ministers in Malaysia and Thailand, with topics for discussion including defence cooperation and trade, as well as deeper digital and tech investment and security collaboration.
Europe
German engine technology found in Chinese warships — report
Deutsche Welle
Several types of Chinese navy warships are powered by engines that were either developed or built by German manufacturers, an investigation by public broadcaster ARD and the Welt am Sonntag newspaper revealed Saturday.
France adopts a new doctrine against the Information Warfare
Difesa e Sicurezza
@FBussoletti
France adopts a new doctrine against the Information Warfare (Infowar). Defense Minister Florence Parly presented it. Objective: to counter the growing spread of fake news and disinformation, aimed at weakening the image of Paris and weakening its armed forces, especially abroad such as the Sahel. Considering that its adversaries no longer hesitate to use the weapon of social media against its military operations, France intends to “win the war before the war”. Its strategy boils down to “being on the offensive”.
Why I Brought a Czech Think Tank to Taiwan | Opinion
Newsweek
@_JakubJanda
Beijing's attempted coercion and bullying of a Central European country of 10 million people is only a small episode in the increasingly severe competition between China and a growing number of democratic states. Free societies around the world are being infiltrated and squeezed by the Chinese Communist Party's aggressive and totalitarian regime. It took us time to get here, but we understand it now.
German intelligence warns COVID-19 deniers increasingly radical
Daily Sabah
The head of a state-level domestic intelligence service in Germany has warned of increasing radicalization among the coronavirus deniers' scene.
Hungarian official: Government bought, used Pegasus spyware
AP News
@jspikebudapest
A senior official in Hungary’s governing party acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that the government purchased a powerful spyware tool, which was allegedly used to target journalists, businesspeople and an opposition politician.
Russia
Sergey Pavlovich, wanted by US on hacking-related charges since 2008, was 'surprised' by Russian arrest
CyberScoop
@jeffstone500
Sergey Pavlovich, an admitted former scammer charged in the U.S. for his alleged role with a forum where thieves bought and sold stolen credit card numbers, was taken into custody on Nov. 1. Exiting the Grand Hotel Emerald, an upscale establishment just blocks away from the Neva River, Pavlovich now says he was “surprised” to be under arrest.
‘Putin’s chef’ wanted by FBI denies links with paramilitary forces and online troll farms
The Telegraph
Dominic Nicholls
The businessman denies any close acquaintance with President Putin, describing the idea as 'America's geopolitical fairytales'.
Middle East
Exploding drone assassination attempt on Iraqi PM fails
The Guardian
An exploding drone aimed at the Iraqi prime minister’s house has failed to kill him, the government has said… A security statement released by state-run media said the failed assassination attempt was with “a booby-trapped drone that tried to target his residence in the Green Zone”.
Refugees are buying groceries with iris scans. What could go wrong?
Protocol
@anna_c_kramer
More than 80% of the refugees in Jordanian camps now use iris scans to pay for their groceries. Refugee advocates say this is a huge future privacy problem.
Hackers Apologize to Arab Royal Families for Leaking Their Data
VICE
@lorenzofb
In October, the infamous ransomware gang known as Conti released thousands of files stolen from the UK jewelry store Graff. Now, the hackers would like the world to know that they regret their decision, perhaps in part because they released files belonging to very powerful people.
Africa
Misc
Metaverse: Augmented reality inventor warns it could be far worse than social media
Big Think
Louis Rosenberg
At its core, augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse are media technologies that aim to present content in the most natural form possible — by seamlessly integrating simulated sights, sounds, and even feelings into our perception of the real world around us. This means AR, more than any form of media to date, has the potential to alter our sense of reality, distorting how we interpret our direct daily experiences.
Is Facebook Bad for You? It Is for About 360 Million Users, Company Surveys Suggest
Wall Street Journal
@georgia_wells @dseetharaman @JeffHorwitz
Facebook researchers have found that 1 in 8 of its users report engaging in compulsive use of social media that impacts their sleep, work, parenting or relationships, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Inside Facebook’s decision to eliminate facial recognition — for now
The Washington Post
@lizzadwoskin
In banning facial recognition, the company has woken up to privacy issues. But critics say it has not changed its DNA.
What a house cat can teach us about cybersecurity
Los Angeles Times
@HerbLinCyber
Everything that I tried to confine Pounce worked for a little while but eventually failed as he found a way past my newest security barrier — just as hackers eventually find their way through the cybersecurity barriers erected to stop them.
Supply chain under attack as 'dark' cyber underground peddles sensitive company data
Yahoo!
@mbrookec
Against a backdrop of extreme volatility in the supply chain of goods, cyber criminals on the dark web have been peddling sensitive information that can provide access to supply chain companies’ computers, according to a report from cyber intelligence firm Intel 471.
What’s Harder to Find Than Microchips? The Equipment That Makes Them
The Wall Street Journal
@mims
The world is hungry for semiconductors, and not all of them need to be made with cutting-edge technology. The race is on to find older machines that can still crank out chips.
Events and Podcasts
The Sydney Dialogue
ASPI
@ASPI_ICPC
The Sydney Dialogue is a world-first summit for emerging, critical and cyber technologies. Launching virtually on 17 November, the inaugural Sydney Dialogue will have an Indo-Pacific focus, featuring keynote addresses from Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison; India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi; and former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe - as well as a number of panel discussions with experts from around the world. You will hear from political, technology, business and civil society leaders and - as well as the world’s best strategic thinkers - as they generate new ideas, work towards common understandings and formulate possible solutions to maximise the opportunities and minimise the negative consequences of the next wave of new technologies. Head on over to our brand new website to check out the line-up of events and speakers, and register for the virtual sessions you’d like to attend.
Quad Tech Network – A techno-diplomacy strategy for telecommunications in the Indo-Pacific
The National Security Podcast
In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Head of ANU National Security College Professor Rory Medcalf and Director of ANU Tech Policy Design Centre Johanna Weaver join Lisa Curtis and Martijn Rasser from the Center for New American Security to discuss their recent paper, A Techno-Diplomacy Strategy for Telecommunications in the Indo-Pacific.
The Sunday Show: Holding Big Tech Accountable for Disinformation and Incitement to Violence
Tech Policy Press
The first segment in this episode is a conversation with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat representing Illinois’ 9th district. Representative Schakowsky serves as Senior Chief Deputy Whip and Chair of the Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has called the tech CEOs to testify in recent months and introduced proposed legislation. The second segment is a discussion on the threat of Big Tech and disinformation to social movements that took place recently at NetRootsNation.
Jobs
ICPC Analyst & Project Manager - Coercive diplomacy
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for an Analyst and Project Manager to manage, and help lead, a project on coercive diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific region... This new role will focus on analysis, workshops and stakeholder engagement centred around coercive diplomacy, including how countries in the Indo-Pacific can work together to tackle this complicated policy challenge.
ICPC Senior Analyst or Analyst - China
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for exceptional and experienced China-focused senior analysts or analysts to join its centre. This role will focus on original research and analysis centred around the (growing) range of topics which our ICPC China team work on. Our China team produces some of the most impactful and well-read policy-relevant research in the world, with our experts often being called upon by politicians, governments, corporates and civil society actors to provide briefings and advice. Analysts usually have at least 5 years, often 7-10 years’ of work experience. Senior analysts usually have a minimum of 15 years relevant work experience and, in addition to research, they take on a leadership role in the centre and tend to be involved in staff and project management, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.