Deepfakes in an Indian Election Campaign | US Labels China’s Official Media as Operatives of the Communist State | Ransomware Attack on US Pipeline Operator
Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.
AI-generated fake videos that are notoriously rampant in porn are now infiltrating politics. On February 7, a day ahead of the Legislative Assembly elections in Delhi, two videos of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Manoj Tiwari criticising the incumbent Delhi government of Arvind Kejriwal went viral on WhatsApp. While one video had Tiwari speak in English, the other was him speaking in the Hindi dialect of Haryanvi. Vice
U.S. has designated China’s official media as operatives of the communist state. The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s efforts to counter Beijing’s influence and intelligence operations in the United States. NYT
The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency recently responded to a ransomware attack on a natural gas compression facility that led the organization to shut down its operations for two days. Cyber Scoop
ASPI ICPC
It's time to talk about TikTok and what it's doing with our kids' data
ABC
@GraceTobin
Fergus Ryan, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), warned parents of young users not to be fooled by TikTok's similarities to US-owned platforms like Facebook and Instagram. “The key difference between Facebook and Instagram and TikTok is that there really isn't much of a firewall between Chinese tech companies and the Chinese state.”
The World
(Facebook has launched a new Whitepaper on Online Content Regulation)
Australia
The Toll hack is a warning to every Australian business
AFR
@rachael_falk
The recent cyber attack on Toll Holdings has been described as "crippling" and the "most significant in Australian corporate history". The lesson for anyone who operates a business reliant on connectivity is that cyber resilience must be treated like the key business risk it is.
China cries discrimination as Abbott urges UK to think again on Huawei
The Australian
@RichAFerguson
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has slammed Great Britain’s decision to allow Huwaei into its 5G network, after China’s Ambassador to Canberra labelled the decision to keep the Chinese tech giant out of Australia “discrimination”.
Huawei threats action on ‘smear campaign’
The Australian
@penbo @RichAFerguson
Chinese telco Huawei has been subjected to “an unprecedented and malicious campaign of smear and innuendo” and reserved the right to take legal action against organisations that “falsely” attacked the company as a state-owned security risk, its Australian lawyer Nick Xenophon said on Tuesday.
WA Huawei rail radio project's CCTV, body cam and live-tracking potential revealed
SMH
@nathanhondros
A mobile data network under construction for Perth's public trains by Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei could be used to support body-worn cameras, CCTV and live tracking of personnel.
Huawei's soft sell won't change Australian hard heads
FR
@jennifer_hewett
Huawei Australia has announced a public relations campaign to persuade Australians to give it 'a fair go', but the Morrison government - and Labor - will remain deaf to such pleas.
China
China Turns to Health-Rating Apps to Control Movements During Coronavirus Outbreak
WSJ
@liz_in_shanghai
Tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent tapped to develop color-coded systems to classify people based on their health conditions and travel history.
(Tweet for the official account of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the US of hypocrisy in cyberspace. )
US
U.S. Designates China’s Official Media as Operatives of the Communist State
NYT
@jakesNYT
The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s efforts to counter Beijing’s influence and intelligence operations in the United States.
Trump Effort to Keep U.S. Tech Out of China Alarms American Firms
NYT
@dmccabe @AnaSwanson
The administration wants to protect national security by restricting the flow of technology to China. But technology companies worry it could undermine them instead.
DHS’s cyber wing responds to ransomware attack on the pipeline operator
Cyber Scoop
@snlyngaas
The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency recently responded to a ransomware attack on a natural gas compression facility that led the organization to shut down its operations for two days, the agency said Tuesday. The hackers were able to encrypt data on the organization’s IT and “operational technology” network, a broad term for a network that oversees industrial processes. No longer able to read data coming from across its enterprise, the facility shut down its various assets, including its pipelines, for two days.
George Soros: Remove Zuckerberg and Sandberg from their posts
FT
Letter to FT calls for Facebook to stop accepting political advertising.
Apple to Fall Short of Projected Revenue Due to Coronavirus
WSJ
@trippmickle
Apple Inc. became the first major U.S. company to say it won’t meet its revenue projections for the current quarter due to the coronavirus outbreak, which it said had limited iPhone production for world-wide sales and curtailed demand for its products in China.
Kickstarter workers vote to form first union in tech industry
NBC News
@aprilaser
The historic vote comes amid growing discontent among employees at technology companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, who have started to organize.
North Asia
North Korea-linked group hacked Thae Yong-ho’s smartphone: security expert
Nknews
@nknewsorg
Thae Yong Ho, a prominent defector and former North Korean diplomat, was targeted by hackers suspected to have links to North Korea, according to a security specialist in Seoul. The news comes days after Thae announced his intention to run for office in South Korea's upcoming legislative elections this April
South Korea Commits $16M to Training Future Digital Finance Experts
Coin Telegraph
The South Korean government is going to invest $16 million in training more digital finance experts in the coming four years.
Southeast Asia
States Times Review Facebook page barred from receiving any financial benefit under Pofma
The Straits Times
The States Times Review (STR) Facebook page has become the first online site to be barred from receiving any financial benefit under Singapore's laws against fake news, after it refused to put up corrections to falsehoods it published. The page, owned by Singaporean Alex Tan Zhi Xiang, was designated as a declared online location (DOL) on Saturday (Feb 15) by Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran. This comes after STR received correction directions on three separate occasions for publishing falsehoods on various issues, including on the coronavirus situation in Singapore.
(Among the false claims the page was issued correction directions for were that Singapore has not been able to trace the source infections in any of the Covid-19 cases and that Singapore had run out of surgical masks.)
South Asia
We've Just Seen the First Use of Deepfakes in an Indian Election Campaign
Vice
@NilChristopher
AI-generated fake videos that are notoriously rampant in porn are now infiltrating politics. On February 7, a day ahead of the Legislative Assembly elections in Delhi, two videos of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Manoj Tiwari criticising the incumbent Delhi government of Arvind Kejriwal went viral on WhatsApp. While one video had Tiwari speak in English, the other was him speaking in the Hindi dialect of Haryanvi.
(Deep Fake of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Manoj Tiwari criticising the incumbent Delhi government of Arvind Kejriwal went viral on WhatsApp. a day ahead of the Legislative Assembly elections.)
Europe
Huawei Is Winning the Argument in Europe, as the U.S. Fumbles to Develop Alternatives
NYT
@dmccabe @SangerNYT
Germany seems poised to follow Britain in letting the Chinese maker build next-generation networks, despite last appeals from the United States.
Middle East
Google removes alleged spying app ToTok from the Play Store for a second time
The Verge
@Verge
Google has removed the chat app ToTok, which is allegedly an espionage tool for the United Arab Emirates, from the Play Store for a second time. The app was previously pulled from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store in December, shortly before The New York Times published a report about it. Google quietly reinstated the app in January. The app appears to have remained unavailable on the App Store.
Misc
The messy, secretive reality behind OpenAI’s bid to save the world
MIT Technology Review
The AI moonshot was founded in the spirit of transparency. This is the inside story of how competitive pressure eroded that idealism.
Carnival Cruises, Delta, and 70 Countries Use a Facial Recognition Company You’ve Never Heard Of
One Zero
Over the past 10 years, NEC has quietly emerged as perhaps the world’s largest purveyor of the technology. NEC has 1,000+ biometrics contracts with agencies around the world.
AI systems claiming to 'read' emotions pose discrimination risks
The Guardian
@hannahdev
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that companies claim can “read” facial expressions are based on outdated science and risks being unreliable and discriminatory, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of emotion has warned.
Research
ASEAN Cyberthreat Assessment 2020: Key Insights from The ASEAN Cybercrime Operations Desk
Interpol
Driven by the increasing use of digital technologies, INTERPOL member countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are rapidly transforming into digital economies. With more businesses shifting to digitalization, more individuals are performing daily transactions online in ASEAN countries. This Report covers the key insights from the ASEAN cybercrime operations dest.