Flaw in Philippines’ contact-tracing app exposed data on 30k health providers | DHS swatting down voter fraud claims pushed by Trump’s team | How The EU Funds Global iPhone And Facebook Surveillance
Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.
A web and mobile phone application that the Philippines government uses to track coronavirus cases contained a flaw that could have allowed access to the names of tens of thousands of health care providers that use the app in that country, according to new research. CyberScoop
Since Election Day, President Donald Trump and his allies have pushed numerous merit-free allegations of voting irregularities. The Department of Homeland Security’s top cyber official is swatting them down in near real-time — contradicting the president in a way that often ends in a pink slip. Politico
Police across the world are getting special training from a little-known European Union agency on how best to snoop on Facebook and Apple iPhones, according to documents obtained by nonprofit Privacy International. Forbes
ASPI ICPC
Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)
@tomatospy
Australia’s cyber security strategy has been updated and has a remarkably different vision to its predecessor.
Netflix invents “tv channel” & a new alt right Facebook?
ABC
The bold, innovation from Netflix - we believe it’s called television! How the social media giants fared against the torrent of US election misinformation. Plus, are people leaving Facebook for new right leaning social media apps? And why does Google want to buy a fitness tracker company? Guests: Ariel Bogle, Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute + Angharad Yeo, host of ABC Good Game Spawn Point.
World
Australia
Australia trials new technology to intercept mystery seeds sent in the mail
The Guardian
The Australian agriculture department is undertaking a world-first trial of new technology aimed at detecting seeds sent in the mail after 228 reports of Australians receiving mysterious seed packets from overseas.
China
US
DHS is swatting down voter fraud claims Trump’s team is pushing
Politico
@NatashaBertrand
Since Election Day, President Donald Trump and his allies have pushed numerous merit-free allegations of voting irregularities. The Department of Homeland Security’s top cyber official is swatting them down in near real-time — contradicting the president in a way that often ends in a pink slip.
Facebook plans to continue a ban on political ads for another month
The New York Times
Facebook said on Wednesday that it plans to continue a moratorium on political advertising for another month, a move that may affect Democrats and Republicans as they continue vying against each other in key Senate races in Georgia.
TikTok says the Trump administration has forgotten about trying to ban it, would like to know what’s up
The Verge
TikTok has filed a petition in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by the Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The reason, according to the company, is that it hasn’t heard from the committee in weeks about an imminent deadline for parent company ByteDance to sell off US assets over national security concerns.
Zoom lied to users about end-to-end encryption for years, FTC says
Ars Technica
Zoom has agreed to upgrade its security practices in a tentative settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which alleges that Zoom lied to users for years by claiming it offered end-to-end encryption.
Southeast Asia
Flaw in Philippines’ contact-tracing app served up data on 30K health care providers
CyberScoop
A web and mobile phone application that the Philippines government uses to track coronavirus cases contained a flaw that could have allowed access to the names of tens of thousands of health care providers that use the app in that country, according to new research.
India
India’s broadcasting ministry to regulate streaming services and online content
TechCrunch
@refsrc
India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which oversees programs beamed on television and screened in theatres in the country, will now also regulate policies for streaming platforms and digital news outlets in a move that is widely believed to kickstart an era of more frequent and stricter censorship on what online services air.
India opens antitrust case against Google over its payments app
TechCrunch
India’s antitrust watchdog has opened an investigation into Google for allegedly abusing the dominant position of its app store to promote its payments service in the world’s second largest internet market.
Europe
How The EU Funds Global iPhone And Facebook Surveillance
Forbes
@iblametom
Police across the world are getting special training from a little-known European Union agency on how best to snoop on Facebook and Apple iPhones, according to documents obtained by nonprofit Privacy International.
The untold story of a cyberattack, a hospital and a dying woman
WIRED
@RalstonWilliam9
German prosecutors tried to prove that a ransomware attack on a hospital was to blame for someone losing their life.
CIA-owned encryption company jeopardised Swiss neutrality: report
The Sydney Morning Herald
The CIA and German intelligence jeopardised Switzerland's historic reputation for neutrality by using a Swiss company as a platform for a global espionage operation for decades, according to a report by members of the Swiss Parliament. Investigators concluded that Swiss authorities were aware of, and at times complicit in, an elaborate espionage operation in which the CIA covertly owned and controlled a Swiss company, Crypto AG, that secretly sold rigged encryption systems to foreign governments.
‘Nobody can block it': how the Telegram app fuels global protest
The Guardian
@shaunwalker7
"How can you stop these Telegram channels? Can you block them? No. Nobody can," Lukashenko complained. A whole network of smaller Telegram chats and channels, coordinating protest in various cities, streets or even specific apartment blocks, has now appeared, creating a localised and fragmented protest movement that authorities cannot possibly crush.
Watch: The many faces of modern China #3
deBALIE
This evening we invite experts and the audience to discuss China’s relation with different countries in the East Asian region, as well as with other major powers and the developing world. We look at its deteriorating relationship with the US, its growing presence across the African continent, its approach to its neighbors and its changing role in the Middle-East. Of course we also pay particular attention to the position of Europe and the Netherlands in this ever-changing global political landscape.
Misc
'Frankenstein's Monster:' Images of Sexual Abuse Are Fueling Algorithmic Porn
Vice
Non-consensual porn videos, like many of those shot by Czech Casting and Girls Do Porn, can live on forever in machine learning datasets.
Events
Nobody Left Behind - Interregional Cyber Capacity Building
Internet Governance Forum
Although discussions on cybersecurity often focus on Western countries, fragility and the lack of security in cyberspace is not a Western phenomenon and is as much of a threat to those in developing regions of the world. In particular, those countries in the process of developing their ICT infrastructures can lack resources and capabilities to address security and resilience issues.
Speakers:
Liga Rozentale, Microsoft Europe
Latha Reddy, Former Deputy National Security Adviser of India
Bart Hogeveen, International Cyber Policy Centre, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Folake Olagunju, Economic Community of West African States
Research
West Papua: New Online Influence Operation Attempts to Sway Independence Debate
Bellingcat
@BenDoBrown
A new online influence operation that seeks to counter West Papua’s independence movement appears to have emerged on prominent social media sites. The discovery comes roughly one year after a similar network of fake accounts was uncovered by Bellingcat. Although the new web of between 100 and 200 accounts has made little impact thus far, it appears to stretch across Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram, utilising methods that have not previously been documented in the online conversation around West Papuan independence.
Jobs
Senior Researcher / Project Lead
ASPI ICPC
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.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.