India warns Twitter to reimpose ban on accounts linked to farmers | Amazon forcing workers into brutal 'megacycle' shifts | FB, Instagram, TikTok & Twitter target resellers of hacked accounts
Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.
India’s government has threatened to punish employees at Twitter with fines and jail terms of up to seven years for restoring hundreds of accounts it has ordered the company to block. Most accounts were critical of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. BuzzFeed News
Amazon has been quietly transitioning warehouse workers at warehouses in the United States to a 10-hour graveyard shift, known as the "megacycle." VICE
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter this week all took steps to crack down on users involved in trafficking hijacked user accounts across their platforms. Krebs on Security
Australia
Service NSW piloting secure data transfer after email compromise
iTnews
@justinrhendry
Service NSW has begun piloting a series of secure data transfer applications to end its unhealthy reliance on email for sharing sensitive personal information with other government agencies.
China
Chinese Spam Network Finally Starts to Gain Some Traction
Graphika
@benimmo
The sprawling pro-Chinese propaganda network that Graphika has dubbed “Spamouflage” and exposed multiple times over the past two years has begun to break out of its echo chamber of fake accounts and reach real social media users, including some heavyweight influencers, with hundreds of videos that praise China, criticize the United States, and attack the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement and exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.
SWIFT sets up JV with China's central bank
Reuters
SWIFT, the global system for financial messaging and cross-border payments, has set up a joint venture with the Chinese central bank's digital currency research institute and clearing centre, a move some see as a sign that China wants to explore global use of its planned digital yuan.
Clubhouse is blowing up in China
Protocol
@shenlulushenand @ZeyiYang
As censorship becomes increasingly pervasive on Chinese social media, Mandarin speakers are using Clubhouse as a new public square for political discourse. Late Tuesday night, Asia time, users in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan stayed up late to debate Chinese identity and democracy. Things got heated when it came to Hong Kong protests, China's handling of the pandemic and censorship.
Meet the Chinese-Made Social Voice Chat App That Came Before Clubhouse
PingWest
@LichtSpektrum
It's yet another example of Chinese companies abandoning the idea of copying from Silicon Valley.
USA
Amazon Is Forcing Its Warehouse Workers Into Brutal ‘Megacycle’ Shifts
VICE
@laurenkgurley
The company has been quietly transitioning warehouse workers at Amazon warehouses nationwide to a 10-hour graveyard shift, known as the "megacycle."
Alphabet Union Alleges Contract Workers Were Silenced About Pay
Bloomberg
@josheidelson
Google contract workers were banned from discussing their pay, and one was suspended for her labor activism, according to a complaint from the Alphabet Workers Union.
Instagram Unmasks High Profile 'OG' Account Stealers, Threatens to Sue
VICE
@josephfcox
Instagram is taking aggressive action against members of the so-called OGUsers community, which hack, extort, and scam their way to controlling high profile, and high value, usernames across a spectrum of apps and social media networks.
Parler CEO Says He Was Fired by Conservative Political Donor Rebekah Mercer
WSJ
@JeffHorwitz @keachhagey
Parler, a moderation-light social media platform that was forced offline last month by tech giants over how it policed its content, has fired its chief executive. John Matze, the former CEO, said he was fired on Friday by the company’s board. He said the board is currently controlled by conservative political donor Rebekah Mercer.
Google paid $6.7 million to bug bounty hunters in 2020
ZDNet
@campuscodi
Google said today it paid more than $6.7 million in bug bounty rewards to 662 security researchers across 62 countries for submitting vulnerability reports in Google products last year.
This Hedge Fund Made $700 Million on GameStop
WSJ
Richard Mashaal and Brian Gonick started buying GameStop Corp. shares in September. They aren’t Reddit day traders or Discord users. They are hedge-fund managers in New York. And when the stock surged from less than $10 a share to above $400 and the dust had settled, they were sitting on a profit of nearly $700 million, one of the great fortunes of the January market mania.
Time to End the Dual Hat?
Council on Foreign Relations
@eborghard
Following the SolarWinds breach, there have been renewed calls for the end of the dual-hat authority that governs the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.
Canada
Clearview AI ruled ‘illegal’ by Canadian privacy authorities
TechCrunch
@zackwhittaker
Controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI violated Canadian privacy laws when it collected photos of Canadians without their knowledge or permission, the country’s top privacy watchdog has ruled.
South-East Asia
Bangladesh bought mass spying equipment from Israeli company
Al Jazeera
@AJIunit
Israeli-made spying tools were bought for Bangladesh intelligence service, despite the South Asian country not recognising Israel.
The dangers of a Sino-American ‘war’ mentality
The Strategist
Simon Tay & Jessica Wau
A ‘tech rush’ of sorts is manifesting with Chinese technology giants like Alibaba, Tencent and Bytedance (the owner of TikTok) expanding their presence in Singapore, alongside their American competitors. The shift in global value chains creates opportunities for Singapore to reach out to both sides of the Sino-American competition and attract and anchor investment across ASEAN as a non-China alternative. This is notwithstanding that the bifurcation of technology and supply chains would be detrimental to economic efficiency and potentially to the unity of ASEAN if different members align more with one side or another.
South and Central Asia
Twitter Unblocked Accounts That Criticized India's Government. Now, Its Employees Are Being Threatened With Jail Time Unless It Blocks Them Again.
BuzzFeed News
@PranavDixit
India’s government has threatened to punish employees at Twitter with fines and jail terms of up to seven years for restoring hundreds of accounts it has ordered the company to block. Most accounts were critical of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.
Delhi Police Register 'Conspiracy' FIR Against Climate Activist Greta Thunberg
The Wire
The Delhi police have registered a case against teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg for allegedly participating in a criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity for her tweets on the farmers’ protest in India, in a move that is likely to be criticised as overreach.
UK
Manchester University cuts ties with CETC firm linked to Uighur surveillance
The Times
@scribblercat @Effy_Yeomans
Manchester University has cancelled an agreement with a Chinese technology company after being warned that it supplied tech platforms and apps used by Beijing’s security forces in the mass surveillance of Uighur Muslims. The university said it had been unaware of the China Electronics Technology Corporation’s (CETC) alleged role in the persecution of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang until reports were brought to its attention by the Commons foreign affairs committee in a letter dated January 14.
Ofcom revokes CGTN's licence to broadcast in the UK
Ofcom
Ofcom has today withdrawn the licence for CGTN to broadcast in the UK, after its investigation concluded that the licence is wrongfully held by Star China Media Limited.
Learn lessons from Huawei 5G row, MPs warn
The Institution of Engineering and Technology
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has published a report advising the government to develop a new strategy for implementing new technologies, with consideration for security and competition.
Europe
Middle East
Africa
Why are Chinese officials in Africa so active in messaging on Xinjiang?
SupChina
@eolander
China’s propaganda strategists have launched a full-scale campaign in print, broadcast and social media to rebut allegations of genocide and widespread human rights violations in Xinjiang. The effort is especially noticeable in Africa where over the past 24 hours, Chinese diplomatic Twitter accounts are now filled with anti-Western statements and re-posts of content produced by state media outlets like People’s Daily and CGTN.
Misc
Research
Jobs
ICPC Senior Analyst or Analyst - China
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for an exceptional and experienced China-focused senior analyst or analyst to join its centre.
Apply here.