Daily Cyber Digest

Share this post
Hundreds arrested as UK organised crime network cracked / Silicon Valley elite think journalists have too much power / Chinese military has links to supplier of 5G equipment in Australia
aspiicpc.substack.com

Hundreds arrested as UK organised crime network cracked / Silicon Valley elite think journalists have too much power / Chinese military has links to supplier of 5G equipment in Australia

ASPI Cyber Policy
Jul 3, 2020
Comment
Share

Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.

  • British law enforcement officials say they have made their biggest ever breakthrough against organised crime after hacking into an encrypted communications system used to plan drug deals and murder plots. The Guardian

  • Silicon Valley elites have been using a private app to chat about how journalists have too much power to "cancel" people and wondering what they, the titans of Silicon Valley, could do about it. VICE

  • Equipment underpinning Australia's telecommunications network, including the rollout of 5G, comes from a company the US Defence Department has named as being "owned by, controlled by or affiliated with China's government, military or defence industries". The Sydney Morning Herald

ASPI ICPC

Twitter avatar for @jleiboldJames Leibold @jleibold
@BitterWinterMag finds new evidence of the compulsory DNA collection program exposed in our recent @ASPI_ICPC report "Genomic Surveillance," including blood collection from children during the covid-19 epidemic @emiledirks
tinyurl.com/y8rv555f & tinyurl.com/y8beyqr9

July 2nd 2020

3 Retweets4 Likes
Twitter avatar for @WomenFutureOpsWomen in Future Operations @WomenFutureOps
A massive thanks to @sekreps @svpercy @Marina_Miron for sharing your research into unconventional warfare during the Women in Future Ops Working Group, in proud partnership with @ASPI_org. Your insights set the WG up to face a challenging task: curate your future team! #FutureOps

July 1st 2020

5 Retweets25 Likes

World

Hacker ransoms 23k MongoDB databases and threatens to contact GDPR authorities
ZDNet 
@campuscodi
The hacker has attempted to ransom nearly 47% of all MongoDB databases left exposed online.

Australia

Chinese military has links to supplier of 5G equipment in Australia
The Sydney Morning Herald
Richard Baker
Equipment underpinning Australia's telecommunications network, including the rollout of 5G, comes from a company the US Defence Department has named as being "owned by, controlled by or affiliated with China's government, military or defence industries". 

Cyber Security: why it matters to not just 'state actors' but you and me 
ABC Radio
The Morrison government has committed more than a billion dollars and 500 new jobs over the next ten years to fighting the war against breaches of our data security. Cyber attacks on essential services are now commonplace, and terms like state actors, denial of service and firewall breaches are sadly all part of how competing interests do their work. But what can individuals do to improve their own personal cyber security?

Indigenous Australians face sexual racism on dating apps: 'The second he found out about my heritage, he was gone'
ABC
@
cameronwilson
Three or four years ago, Fallon Gregory downloaded Tinder and matched with someone who was very complimentary — at first. Ms Gregory is a Perth-based First Nations woman from the Gija/Bardi and Nyul Nyul tribes in the Kimberley, who'd never used an online dating app on her smartphone before. While she was chatting with her match, she became a bit uneasy about how much he kept commenting on her appearance. "When he first matched, he was like 'oh my God, you're so pretty, you look exotic', going on and on about my beauty," she said. "And then he asked 'I don't mean to be rude, but are you Indigenous?' I said yes. Then, he thanked me, told me good luck with everything, and unmatched me," she said.

China

Connection discovered between Chinese hacker group APT15 and defense contractor 
ZDNet
@campuscodi
Lookout said it linked APT15 malware to Xi'an Tianhe Defense Technology, a Chinese defense contractor.

ByteDance takes stake in e-book operator amid content war with Tencent
South China Morning Post
@CocoF1026
TikTok owner ByteDance has acquired a stake in Beijing Dingtian Culture Entertainment, which runs multiple online reading platforms competing with Tencent-backed market leader China Literature.

USA

Zuckerberg Tells Facebook Staff He Expects Advertisers to Return ‘Soon Enough’
The Information
@alexeheath
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees he was reluctant to bow to the threats of a growing ad boycott, saying in private remarks that “my guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough.”

  • Facebook Boycott Organizers Want a Civil Rights Expert in the Company’s Executive Suite The Wall Street Journal

  • Facebook says 5,000 app developers got user data after cutoff date  ZDNet

  • The hate Facebook fosters destroys lives. Here’s what it did to me The Guardian

Silicon Valley Elite Discuss Journalists Having Too Much Power in Private App
VICE
@
annamerlan @josephfcox @jason_koebler
During a conversation held Wednesday night on the invite-only Clubhouse app—an audio social network popular with venture capitalists and celebrities—entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, several Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalists, and, for some reason, television personality Roland Martin spent at least an hour talking about how journalists have too much power to "cancel" people and wondering what they, the titans of Silicon Valley, could do about it.

Tech Tycoon Peter Thiel Shies From Trump Re-Election Campaign
The Wall Street Journal
President Trump’s most prominent Silicon Valley supporter, billionaire Peter Thiel, has told friends and associates that he plans to sit out this year’s presidential campaign because he thinks re-election is increasingly a long shot, people familiar with the matter say.

Inside the Plot to Kill the Open Technology Fund
VICE
@daithaigilbert
This U.S. program provides encryption technologies to journalists and activists living under repressive regimes. But a Trump appointee wants to tear it all down.

Southeast Asia

Philippines / Isn't it ironic? Poor connection forces suspension of Senate hearing on internet
Rappler
@reyaika
Telco representatives are not spared from bad internet connection.

South and Central Asia

After Chinese App Ban, Govt to Start Hearing Clarifications From Firms on Data Sharing Practices
The Wire
An inter-ministerial government panel will soon start hearing submissions and clarifications made by the Chinese companies whose apps were banned by an IT ministry order earlier this week. 

PM Modi quits popular Chinese microblogging site Weibo following ban on Chinese apps
The Economic Times
PM Narendra Modi decided to quit the Chinese microblogging site Weibo following the ban on 59 Chinese apps by the Indian government. All his posts have been deleted.

False and misleading reports have surged in the country during the coronavirus pandemic.
BBC News
@shrutimenon10
Fake or misleading news can have a real impact on those who find themselves the targets. This has been a particular problem in India during the coronavirus pandemic, where reliable sources of news are frequently drowned out by unverified information online.

UK

Hundreds arrested as UK organised crime network is cracked 
The Guardian
@VikramDodd
British law enforcement officials say they have made their biggest ever breakthrough against organised crime after hacking into an encrypted communications system used to plan drug deals and murder plots.

Twitter avatar for @josephfcoxJoseph Cox @josephfcox
New: leaked documents and sources from in and around the criminal world detail an extraordinary operation. Police infiltrated an encrypted phone network, and for months read millions of messages. It's hard to overstate how big this is for organized crime
vice.com/en_us/article/…?VICE - How Police Secretly Took Over a Global Phone Network for Organized CrimePolice monitored a hundred million encrypted messages sent through Encrochat, a network used by career criminals to discuss drug deals, murders, and extortion plots.vice.com

July 2nd 2020

852 Retweets1,224 Likes
Twitter avatar for @BartHoogeveenBart Hoogeveen @BartHoogeveen
Today, police and prosecutors from NL and FR together with Europol and Eurojust presented the results of a coordinated long-term operation against the criminal use of encrypted communication service provider Encrochat.
europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/…
Image

July 2nd 2020

1 Retweet7 Likes

UK competition watchdog ignores calls for online ad sector probe
The Financial Times 
The UK’s competition watchdog has shied away from a full market investigation into the online advertising industry dominated by Facebook and Google, citing Covid-19 as one of the reasons for the decision. 

Europe

Nokia and Ericsson remain vulnerable in geopolitical 5G tussle
The Financial Times 
@rmilnenordic
But most fascinating of all could be the American intrigue over Nokia and Ericsson. 5G telecoms networks are one of the very few areas in technology where the US is almost entirely absent and it obviously hurts. Attorney-general William Barr said in February that the country should consider taking stakes in the Finnish and Swedish telecoms equipment makers either directly or through US companies.

Twitter avatar for @CharlesRollet1Charles Rollet @CharlesRollet1
.@SKjeldtoft reports for @politiken that Danish professors helped develop an algorithm with Hikvision which can track "how attitudes spread over time on social media and other networks". The profs now regret this due to the algo's repressive potential
Aalborg Universitet har hjulpet omstridt kinesisk firma, der bidrager til forfølgelse og overvågning af millionerFirmaet Hikvision har sammen med forskere på Aalborg Universitet udviklet en algoritme, som kan benyttes til masseovervågning. Det er stærkt kritisabelt, siger eksperter, fordi Hikvision bidrager til masseovervågning og forfølgelse i Kina.politiken.dk

July 2nd 2020

6 Retweets8 Likes

Misc

Goodbye to the Wild Wild Web
The New York Times
@kevinroose
The internet is changing, and the freewheeling, anything-goes culture of social media is being replaced by something more accountable.

Research

Twitter avatar for @chinaquarterlyThe China Quarterly @chinaquarterly
New online - #openaccess article by @lotus_ruan, Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Jeffrey Knockel, Ruohan Xiong and Jakub Dalek examining keyword #censorship on #Wechat during China's 19th National Communist Party Congress
The Intermingling of State and Private Companies: Analysing Censorship of the 19th National Communist Party Congress on WeChat | The China …The Intermingling of State and Private Companies: Analysing Censorship of the 19th National Communist Party Congress on WeChat - Lotus Ruan, Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Jeffrey Knockel, Ruohan Xiong, Jakub Dalekdoi.org

July 2nd 2020

7 Retweets11 Likes

Events

Twitter avatar for @JakeWallis_ASPIDr Jake Wallis @JakeWallis_ASPI
Excited to be speaking at a conference hosted by @IOpartnership and @Policy on July 9! We'll be discussing the central problems and issues in information operations and what we've learned so far from Twitter's IO data. Details and registration below
Understanding Information Operations with Twitter Data Launch EventIn 2018, Twitter released a large archive of tweets and media from Russian and Iranian troll farms. This archive of information operations has since been expanded to include activity originating from more than 15 countries and offers researchers unique insight into how IO unfolds on the service.carnegieendowment.org

July 2nd 2020

4 Retweets10 Likes
Twitter avatar for @ietf@IETF @ietf
The recent @Apple #WWDC2020 session "Boost performance and security with modern networking" explains how #IPv6, #HTTP2, #TLS13 and many more #openstandards developed in the #IETF work--and how they make today's Internet experience faster and more secure:
developer.apple.com/videos/play/ww…
Image
Image
Image

June 30th 2020

17 Retweets39 Likes

Share Daily Cyber Digest

CommentComment
ShareShare

Create your profile

0 subscriptions will be displayed on your profile (edit)

Skip for now

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.

TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2022 ASPI Cyber Policy
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Publish on Substack Get the app
Substack is the home for great writing