Australian politicians call for Mark Zuckerberg to appear before inquiry | TikTok goes to Washington to meet with lawmakers | Fake Corbyn tweets tried to 'sow doubt' among voters
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Mark Zuckerberg is facing calls to appear before Australia’s parliament and explain how Facebook failed to detect and stop a massive global disinformation network from spreading hate and influencing voters over a two-year period. The Guardian.
TikTok’s leader, Alex Zhu, is set to pay his first known visit to Capitol Hill next week, meeting with lawmakers in an attempt to combat concerns that the company’s Chinese origins pose serious privacy, security and censorship risks. Washington Post.
After the London Bridge attack, an organised effort to spread fake tweets from Jeremy Corbyn began to manipulate social media to 'sow doubt' among voters. Sky News.
ASPI ICPC
New swarm of pro-China Twitter bots spreads information about Xinjiang
Abacus News
@mashaborak
A researcher from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) says she found a “massive spambot network in the making” that’s trying to influence Twitter discussions on the issue. And strangely, they appear inclined to represent themselves as celebrities.
World
One billion surveillance cameras will be watching around the world in 2021, a new study says
CNBC
@ellycosgrove
One billion surveillance cameras will be watching around the world in 2021— and more than half of those cameras will be in China — according to a report from IHS Markit published on Thursday.
Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Is an Engine of Anti-Muslim Hate the World Over. Don’t You Care?
The Intercept
@mehdirhasan
What happened to the guy who told his Muslim employees in 2015 that he would “fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment”?
Australia
Anthony Albanese takes aim at social media giants, accusing them of robbing politics of civility
ABC
@steph_dalzell
Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese has taken a swing at Facebook in his last major speech of the political year, accusing the social media giant of being complacent with false information.
Australian politicians call for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to appear before inquiry
The Guardian
@knausc @NickEvershed
Mark Zuckerberg is facing calls to appear before Australia’s parliament and explain how Facebook failed to detect and stop a massive global disinformation network from spreading hate and influencing voters over a two-year period.
China
Facial recognition: how China cornered the surveillance market
FT
Chinese facial recognition companies have taken the lead in serving this growing international market not least because of the advantage they have over peers in other countries: a massive domestic market and an authoritarian system where privacy often takes a back seat. According to IHS Markit, China accounted for nearly half of the global facial recognition business in 2018.
Yuan Yang @YuanfenYang
"A lot of these governments, whether it’s liberal democracies or more autocratic, are in tenuous positions... Now there's tech that allows them to fight back against political mobilisation". My big read this weekend with @madhumita29 @FT 1/ https://t.co/N1dd1fDasmRead ASPI ICPC’s report - Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and surveillance
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre has updated the public database that maps the global expansion of key Chinese technology companies. This update adds a further 11 companies and organisations: iFlytek, Megvii, ByteDance (which owns TikTok), SenseTime, YITU, CloudWalk, DJI, Meiya Pico, Dahua, Uniview and BeiDou.
A New Game in China Lets Players Attack the Hong Kong Protesters
Vice
@jamiefullerton1
According to China’s state-operated Global Times, there’s a new hit mobile game called Fight the Traitors Together, which lets players join in assaulting and beating Hong Kong protesters.
Hong Kong schools fall victim to cyberattack, raising fears for private data of pupils
SCMP
Eight schools operating a web-based administrative network that stores highly sensitive information were breached, with three of them reporting data leaks, the Education Bureau said on Friday night. Police are investigating.
China is trolling and hacking Uighur exiles across the world
Wired
@morganmeaker
As China’s treatment of Uighur gains global attention, Uighur activists living abroad are experiencing an escalation in digital attacks. In May 2019, when the Germany-based World Uighur Congress partook in a human rights conference in Washington, DC, its team tallied 1,255 attacks on its website.
Propaganda beyond the Great Firewall: Chinese party-state media on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
MERICS
@mareikeohlberg
Although Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China, Chinese party-state media have built very active presences on these platforms. Lately, Chinese ambassadors around the world have been opening Twitter accounts to feed their government’s positions into global debates on China. Even though the propaganda may seem crude and inefficient at first sight, its long-term effects should not be underestimated.
How Attackers Used Look-Alike Domains to Steal $1 Million From a Chinese VC
Dark Reading
@jaivijayan
Nearly all it took for scammers to walk away with a cool $1 million in cash — meant for the startup from the investment firm — was two Web domains and 32 emails.
USA
TikTok leader schedules Washington trip to meet with lawmakers as investigations loom
Washington Post
TikTok’s leader, Alex Zhu, is set to pay his first known visit to Capitol Hill next week, meeting with lawmakers in an attempt to combat concerns that the company’s Chinese origins pose serious privacy, security and censorship risks. The planned trip — confirmed by multiple people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it on the record — reflects TikTok’s race to maintain the app’s explosion in popularity at a time when U.S-China relations are frayed and U.S. officials are wary about the inroads Chinese companies are making into the technologies where the United States has long been the unchallenged leader.
Jeff Bezos warns US military it risks losing tech supremacy
FT
Jeff Bezos has warned American military leaders that the US risks losing its superiority in technologies that have been key to its national security.
Pentagon Concerned Russia Cultivating Sympathy Among US Troops
VOA
@jseldin
Russian efforts to weaken the West through a relentless campaign of information warfare may be starting to pay off, cracking a key bastion of the U.S. line of defense: the military.
A Sprint contractor left thousands of US cell phone bills on the internet by mistake
Tech Crunch
@zackwhittaker
A contractor working for cell giant Sprint stored on an unprotected cloud server hundreds of thousands of cell phone bills of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile subscribers.
Ransomware at Colorado IT Provider Affects 100+ Dental Offices
Krebs on Security
@briankrebs
A Colorado company that specializes in providing IT services to dental offices suffered a ransomware attack that is disrupting operations for more than 100 dentistry practices, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.
Asia
EDITORIAL: Collaboration key to fight spying
Taipei Times
The US clearly recognizes the shared interest in combating cyberespionage and understands the value in working with Taiwan. Collaborating to share information on other forms of espionage should be the next step.
Huawei appeals to Japan as the US miscalculates
Asia Times
One party is playing power checkers with a hammer in one hand while the others are playing Go or 3D chess.
Cyber crooks attack Indian armed forces
Manorama Online
After the Armed Forces were attacked by cyber crooks on Friday late night, the tri-services cyber wings issued emergency warning to all the defence personnel not to access mail titled -- 'Notice' -- with attachments, sources said on Saturday.
UK
Suspected Campaign from Russia on Reddit
Reddit
We were recently made aware of a post on Reddit that included leaked documents from the UK. We investigated this account and the accounts connected to it, and today we believe this was part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia.
General election: Fake Corbyn tweets on London Bridge attack tried to 'sow doubt' among voters
Sky News
@rowlsmanthorpe
After the London Bridge attack, an organised effort to spread fake tweets from Jeremy Corbyn began to manipulate social media.
Amazon ready to cash in on free access to NHS data
The Times
Amazon has been handed the keys to a trove of NHS data it can use to develop products to sell internationally without paying a penny to the UK.
Europe
Netherlands to raise at least 900 million euros in first 5G auction
Reuters
@Reuters
The Netherlands aims to rake in at least 900 million euros ($992 million) from its first auction of bandwidth for 5G networks, it said on Thursday, adding some equipment suppliers could be banned from the new networks if they raise security concerns.
BMW and Hyundai hacked by Vietnamese hackers, report claims
ZD Net
@campuscodi
German media is reporting that hackers suspected to have ties to the Vietnamese government have breached the networks of two car manufacturers, namely BMW and Hyundai.
Malicious Activity Aligning with Gamaredon TTPs Targets Ukraine
Anomali
@anomali
The Anomali Threat Research (ATR) team has identified malicious activity that we believe is being conducted by the Russia-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group Gamaredon (Primitive Bear). Some of the documents have been discussed by other researchers. This Gamaredon campaign appears to have begun in mid-October 2019 and is ongoing as of November 25, 2019.
Russia
Russia Is Teaching the World to Spy
NYT
@apolyakova
There’s good reason to be worried about the exportation of Chinese technology. But China isn’t the only merchant offering digital surveillance tools to strongmen. It may be tempting to dismiss Russia as irrelevant in this domain, but that would be a mistake. In fact, Russia’s low-tech model of digital authoritarianism could prove to be more readily adaptable and enduring.
Africa
Ethiopia briefly shut internet as a cyber attack hits
Borkena
Ethiopia Information Network Security Agency (INSA) said on Thursday that a cyber attack directed at financial institutions in the country is foiled. In the course of doing so, the agency said that it was compelled to shut the internet in the country for up to 20 minutes, as reported by state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporation.
Misc.
Interview with one of the world's best competitive bug hunters
ZD Net
@campuscodi
Meet Amat Cama, winner of three consecutive Pwn2Own competitions.
Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Is an Engine of Anti-Muslim Hate the World Over. Don’t You Care?
The Intercept
@mehdirhasan
What happened to the guy who told his Muslim employees in 2015 that he would “fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment”?
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