Covid-19 disinformation & social media manipulation | One of the largest cyberattack hits major U.S. hospital system | How Taiwan's 'civic hackers' helped find a new way to run the country
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For the latest report in our series on Covid-19 disinformation and social media manipulation, we’ve investigated ongoing inauthentic activity on Facebook and YouTube. This activity uses both English and Chinese language content to present narratives that support the political objectives of the Chinese Communist Party. ASPI ICPC
Computer systems for Universal Health Services, which has more than 400 locations, primarily in the U.S., began to fail over the weekend. NBC News
New social media platform Polis cuts through noise and trolling to establish consensus – and create new laws. The Guardian
ASPI ICPC
New Report: Covid-19 Disinformation & Social Media Manipulation
ASPI ICPC
For the latest report in our series on Covid-19 disinformation and social media manipulation, we’ve investigated ongoing inauthentic activity on Facebook and YouTube. This activity uses both English and Chinese language content to present narratives that support the political objectives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
These narratives span a range of topics, including assertions of corruption and incompetence in the Trump administration, the US Government’s decision to ban TikTok, the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, and the ongoing tensions in the US–China relationship. A major theme, and the focus of this report, is criticism of how the US broadly, and the Trump administration in particular, are handling the Covid-19 crisis on both the domestic and the global levels. Previous reports in this series include inauthentic activity promoting Falun Gong, Pro-Russian vaccine politics drives new disinformation narratives and ID2020, Bill Gates and the Mark of the Beast: how Covid-19 catalyses existing online conspiracy movements.
Under cover of COVID there's been troubling news about tyranny's rise
The Sydney Morning Herald
But the Australian Strategic Policy Institute last week published satellite images indicating that while eight centres had been closed, more than 60 others had been built or expanded over the past year. It counted a total of 380 detention centres in Xinjiang.
Read our new project 'Exploring Xinjiang's detention system' here.
Australia
Budget 2020: Scott Morrison’s $7bn digital fast-track push
The Australian
Scott Morrison will spend more than $7bn fast-tracking Australia’s digital economy, speeding up broadband and beefing up cyber security to streamline business operations and increase connectivity and economic output.
Industry urged to commercialise in bid to build scale and resilience
The Sydney Morning Herald
Industries will gain more federal help to commercialise new products and expand their scale under a budget plan that offers more assistance but rules out a return to direct subsidies.
AFP muscles up on cybercrime response
Innovationaus
The Australian Federal Police has made cybercrime a central priority for 2020 and beyond, ratcheting up cybercrime operations as the force confronts COVID-themed cyberattacks, as well as an increase in the volume and belligerence of cyberattacks by state-based actors.
Apple Watch makes auto call to emergency 000 number after Australian man falls from ladder
iTWire
The Apple Watch from Series 4 and above has offered a fall detection feature that is automatically turned on for those over 55, and which you can turn on manually if desired, and it unexpectedly helped Latrobe Valley man Jason Potts who didn't know Apple Watch could do this!
Accenture establishes Adelaide hub to support defence, cyber and space capabilities
Defence Connect
South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has officially welcomed one of the world’s largest technology and professional services firms to Adelaide, with Accenture launching the ‘Accenture Adelaide Hub’, which is expected to create up to 2000 new jobs over the next five years.
USA
Cyberattack hits major hospital system, possibly one of the largest in U.S. history
NBC News
Computer systems for Universal Health Services, which has more than 400 locations, primarily in the U.S., began to fail over the weekend.
Revealed: Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016
Channel 4 News
3.5 million Black Americans were profiled and categorised as ‘Deterrence’ by Trump campaign – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.
The Biden campaign wants to take back YouTube
The Verge
Behind the scenes, Biden’s campaign is pushing to make YouTube a more friendly place for Democrats. The Biden campaign has been working directly with YouTube channels and Facebook pages like Occupy Democrats and creators like Brian Tyler Cohen to create content that reaches millions of people, the campaign said, as part of a broader effort to counterbalance influencers like Shapiro and Rubin. A conscious counterpoint to the Trump campaign’s “Death Star,” the effort has been nicknamed “the Rebel Alliance.”
Error discovered on Georgia touchscreens in US Senate race
AJC
Georgia election officials said Saturday they found a programming error on the state’s voting touchscreens that caused a column of candidates in the 21-person U.S. Senate special election to disappear at times when flipping back and forth between screens.
False claims of hacked voter information likely intended to cast doubt on legitimacy of U.S. elections
FBI & CISA
During the 2020 election season, foreign actors and cyber criminals are spreading false and inconsistent information through various online platforms in an attempt to manipulate public opinion, discredit the electoral process, and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions. These malicious actors could use these forums to also spread disinformation suggesting successful cyber operations have compromised election infrastructure and facilitated the “hacking” and “leaking” of U.S. voter registration data.
North Asia
How Taiwan's 'civic hackers' helped find a new way to run the country
The Guardian
New social media platform Polis cuts through noise and trolling to establish consensus – and create new laws.
American Could Face Prison in Thailand After Posting Negative Reviews of a Resort
The New York Times
The man was arrested under Thailand’s criminal defamation law, which has been used to silence critics and stifle dissent. The hotel that brought charges acknowledges that using the law might be “excessive.”
Europe
Amsterdam and Helsinki launch algorithm registries to bring transparency to public deployments of AI
VentureBeat
Amsterdam and Helsinki today launched AI registries to detail how each city uses algorithms to deliver services.
Hungarian banks, telecoms services briefly hit by cyber attack: Magyar Telekom
Reuters
Some Hungarian banking and telecommunication services were briefly disrupted by a powerful cyber attack on Thursday launched from computer servers in Russia, China and Vietnam, telecoms firm Magyar Telekom MTEL.BU said on Saturday.
Inside Russia’s state-media propaganda machine
POLITICO
Russia’s state media actively promoted Brexit supporters and undermined Hillary Clinton’s 2016 U.S. presidential bid as part of a yearslong campaign to sow doubt among Western democracies, according to almost two dozen current and former journalists for RT, the Kremlin-backed outlet.
Misc
How ‘Save the Children’ Is Keeping QAnon Alive
The New York Times
New research suggests that the biggest jolt to QAnon came from the so-called “Save the Children” movement. It started out as a fund-raising campaign for a legitimate anti-trafficking charity, but was then hijacked by QAnon believers, who used the movement to spread false and exaggerated claims about a global child-trafficking conspiracy led by top Democrats and Hollywood elites. This hijacking began in July, around the same time that Twitter and Facebook began cracking down on QAnon accounts.
Man in the Middle - How Arkady Bukh, a New York-based immigrant from the former Soviet bloc, emerged as the go-to defense lawyer for the cybercrime underworld
Cyber Scoop
Like a Perry Mason for the digital age, Bukh has defended dozens of accused cybercriminals over a 10-year span in which hacking sprees have expanded from a corporate nuisance into an espionage tool deployed by governments aiming to influence geopolitics.
Microsoft Office 365 services inaccessible after code changed
IT News
Microsoft Office 365 users are unable to access services with the cloud provider confirming an outage of its Azure Active Directory service. The company’s official health status page said that users “may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services”. It later listed the outage is "non regional", meaning it is affecting customers worldwide.
Research
Internet Society Perspectives on Internet Content Blocking: An Overview
Internet Society
The use of Internet blocking by governments to prevent access to illegal content is a worldwide and growing trend. There are many reasons why policy makers choose to block access to some content, such as online gambling, intellectual property, child protection, and national security. However, apart from issues relating to child pornography, there is little international consensus on what constitutes appropriate content from a public policy perspective.
Cyber-incident Management: Identifying and Dealing with the Risk of Escalation
SIPRI
The ever-increasing dependence on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in all aspects of society raises many challenges for national crisis management agencies. These agencies need to prepare not only for new cyberthreats and cyber vulnerabilities, but also for the fact that the aftermath of a cyber incident affecting critical infrastructure has its own challenges.
Jobs
Senior Researcher / Project Lead
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has an outstanding opportunity for a senior researcher to lead a one-year project looking at leadership networks across Asia. Interviews will start immediately.
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