FBI, NSA and CISA warn of Russian state-sponsored hacks | French government launched new quantum computing platform | Economist says rising inequality stems from automation
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Less than one day after Russia and the US held bilateral talks over the deployment of troops near Ukraine, US intelligence and law enforcement agencies issued a warning to critical infrastructure operators about threats from Russian state-sponsored hackers. The Record by Recorded Future
The French government launched a new programme to link quantum machines and supercomputers on Tuesday (4 January). The resources will have to be made available to researchers and companies to ensure France is up to speed with the technological revolutions to come. Euractiv
Daron Acemoglu, an influential economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been making the case against what he describes as “excessive automation.” The New York Times
China
China is pushing for broader use of its digital currency, but challenges remain
CNBC
Arjun Kharpal
China is ramping up efforts to roll out the digital yuan to the broader population, as the country’s technology giants like Alibaba and Tencent jump on board.
Read ASPI ICPC’s report "The flipside of China’s central bank digital currency"
The CAICT Has Issued a "Xinghuo BIF" Declaration
Yahoo! Finance
Recently, the China Academy of lnformation and Communications Technology ("CAICT") took the lead in issuing the "Xinghuo BIF" development declaration to build a national exchange platform for the integration of production and education around the world.
USA
US warns of Russian state-sponsored attacks on critical infrastructure
The Record by Recorded Future
Adam Janofsky
Less than one day after Russia and the US held bilateral talks over the deployment of troops near Ukraine, US intelligence and law enforcement agencies issued a warning to critical infrastructure operators about threats from Russian state-sponsored hackers.
Understanding and Mitigating Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Threats to U.S. Critical Infrastructure
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
The Former NSA Official Vying to Steer Biden’s Cyber Policy
Bloomberg
William Turton
Anne Neuberger is at the center of a bureaucratic tussle within the White House.
Offense will win some battles, but cyber defense will win the war
CyberScoop
Selena Larson
But to have real, long-term impact on these nefarious activities, organizations and governments need to more actively consider the ways that defense can impose costs too: Robust, consistent and well-funded cyber defenses cost adversaries time, effort and the likelihood of success. Defense, and investment in mandatory cybersecurity requirements, is how we will solve the fundamental problems at the heart of the ransomware epidemic.
How the Pentagon enlisted ethical hackers amid the Log4j crisis
The Record by Recorded Future
Martin Matishak
The Pentagon last month pivoted an ongoing bug bounty program to track down Log4j vulnerabilities on potentially thousands of public-facing military websites, the first time the Defense Department marshaled the ethical hacker community to tackle an emerging digital crisis.
Feds' spending on facial recognition tech expands, despite privacy concerns
CyberScoop
Tonya Riley
The FBI on Dec. 30 signed a deal with Clearview AI for an $18,000 subscription license to the company’s facial recognition technology. While the value of the contract might seem just a drop in the bucket for the agency’s nearly $10 billion budget, the contract was significant in that it cemented the agency’s relationship with the controversial firm.
How an ‘Ethical’ Hacker Convention Is Fueling Trump’s Big Lie
VICE
A few days a year, hacking enthusiasts at DEFCON race to see if they can prove voting machines are not secure. The event is fodder for disinformation.
This Private Equity Firm Is Amassing Companies That Collect Data on America’s Children
The Markup
Todd Feathers
Vista Equity Partners has been buying up software used in schools. Parents want to know what the companies do with kids’ data
Open-Source Vaccines Got More Funding From Tito’s Vodka Than the Government
VICE
Ella Fassler
Corbevax is targeting low-income countries to stop new COVID variants from emerging. Scientists say rich countries are still refusing to fund it.
North Asia
A Growing Army of Hackers Helps Keep Kim Jong Un in Power
Bloomberg
Jon Herskovitz & Jeong-Ho Lee
Kim Jong Un marked a decade as supreme leader of North Korea in December. Whether he can hold on to power for another 10 years may depend on state hackers, whose cybercrimes finance his nuclear arms program and prop up the economy.
South & Central Asia
Patchwork APT caught in its own web
Malwarebytes Labs
Patchwork is an Indian threat actor that has been active since December 2015 and usually targets Pakistan via spear phishing attacks. In its most recent campaign from late November to early December 2021, Patchwork has used malicious RTF files to drop a variant of the BADNEWS (Ragnatela) Remote Administration Trojan (RAT).
UK
Actors Behind UK Misinformation Site The Daily Expose Revealed
Logically
Ernie Piper
A Logically investigation can reveal that Jonathan Allen-Walker of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire is behind the conspiracy news site, The Daily Expose.
Secure boot for UK electric car chargers isn't mandatory until 2023 – but why the delay?
The Register
Gareth Corfield
Electric car chargers will have to include secure boot and automatic network disconnection if unsigned software runs on the smart devices – but only from 2023, the British government has said.
Europe
France opens access to quantum computing to researchers, start-ups
Euractiv
Mathieu Pollet
The French government launched a new programme to link quantum machines and supercomputers on Tuesday (4 January). The resources will have to be made available to researchers and companies to ensure France is up to speed with the technological revolutions to come.
Lithuania wins microchip windfall from Taiwan in China clash
POLITICO
Stuart Lau & Laurens Cerulus
Lithuania's showdown with China over Taiwan is poised to deliver an unexpected windfall to the small Baltic nation that France and Germany could only dream of: investment in microchip manufacturing. Europe is a laggard in the all-important semiconductor industry and a key plank of the EU's industrial strategy — intended to keep Europe in the economic big league with rivals such as China and the U.S. — is a drive for microchip production.
Psy-ops are a crucial weapon in the war against disinformation
Financial Times
Elisabeth Braw
Sweden’s new psychological operations agency will attack falsehoods that spread online like a virus.
Undersea Cable Connecting Norway With Arctic Satellite Station Has Been Mysteriously Severed
The Drive
Thomas Newdick
The cables run through a highly strategic stretch of water near where the Barents and Norwegian Sea meet.
Russia
Exposed: Who were Russia's spies at Nato HQ?
Euobserver
Andrew Rettman
A lieutenant colonel with top-level Kremlin links, a spy-catcher, and a Big Data specialist - the identities of eight Russians recently expelled by Nato from Brussels give clues to why Moscow reacted so harshly and what its operatives were doing.
Misc
Economists Pin More Blame on Tech for Rising Inequality
The New York Times
Steve Lohr
Daron Acemoglu, an influential economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been making the case against what he describes as “excessive automation.”
Encrypted messaging app Signal’s chief executive steps down
Financial Times
Hannah Murphy
Moxie Marlinspike will be replaced on an interim basis by WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton
To Understand the Metaverse, Look to Video Games
The New York Times
The head of Xbox and executive vice president of gaming at Microsoft, Spencer says popular games like Microsoft’s Halo and Minecraft — and competitors like Roblox and Fortnite — are already creating virtual worlds similar to the metaverse. And he says that video games, whose sales have soared during Covid, could offer lessons for the workplaces that have moved online in the pandemic: “We look at these virtual spaces, and some of the things that we’ve learned in video games of people coming together to cooperate together, to achieve tasks.”
NFT art sales are booming. Just without some artists' permission.
NBC News
Kevin Collier
NFTs were hyped as a way to make sure artists get paid for their work. Now, many creators are struggling to stop a wave of piracy.
Events and Podcasts
Uncovering China's Internet Trolls
BBC Radio 4
Tessa Wong was trolled after reporting on China, but rather than simply accepting the abuse, she tried to find out why so many people had launched these attacks. What she found was that some of them were not the spontaneous outbursts of outraged citizens which they might have appeared. Rather it seems that key social media political influencers are being encouraged in their work by the Chinese authorities.
Policy Issues for Telecom Transformation
CSIS
Join CSIS for an event on the policy and legislative questions surrounding the transition to 5G/6G featuring opening remarks from Representative Mike Doyle (D-PA). His remarks will be followed by a panel discussion.
Technology for Change Week Asia 2022
Economist Impact Events
Has the pandemic created an impetus to rein in the power of big tech? Join Karly Winkler, Senior analyst, International Cyber Policy Centre - Australian Stratergic Policy Institute and Matt Perault, Director, Center on Technology Policy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill as they share insights at #EcontechforChange
State-aligned misogynistic disinformation on Arabic Twitter: The attempted silencing of an Al Jazeera journalist
Open Information Science
Since 2017, women journalists critical of regional governments have been subjected to increased attacks online, but none as intense as the attack on Al Jazeera anchor Ghada Oueiss in June 2020.
Jobs
ICPC Analyst / Project Lead - Cyber Capacity Building
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for a talented Analyst / Project Lead to support a new project that looks at supporting states in the Indo-Pacific in defending against cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property. The successful candidate will work in a small, high-performing team to produce original research and analysis that directly informs broader diplomatic and cyber capacity building activities on the topic of equipping countries globally with tools to defend against the use of cyber tools to steal IP for commercial purposes.Together with a project lead on Learning and Development and the Project Director, the analyst will also participate in international workshops, provide training to foreign governments and present to other external stakeholders.
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.