Intel CEO pitches pricey chip plants to officials at home and abroad | Hackers behind recent attacks on Iran | Huawei accused in suit of installing data ‘back door’ in Pakistan project
Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.
Intel Corp.’s chief executive and other board members met with Biden administration officials last month and held a rooftop reception near the White House to push a multibillion-dollar chip-investment plan, according to people familiar with the event. The gathering was only one stop for Pat Gelsinger, the Intel boss, in what has become a global tour to get facetime with government leaders—many worried about their countries’ access to chips at an unprecedented time of shortage. The Wall Street Journal
On July 9th and 10th, 2021 Iranian Railways and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development systems became the subject of targeted cyber attacks. Check Point Research investigated these attacks and found multiple evidence that these attacks heavily rely on the attacker’s previous knowledge and reconnaissance of the targeted networks. Research Checkpoint
A long-running dispute between Huawei Technologies Co. and a small U.S.-based contractor has escalated to U.S. federal court, with the contractor alleging Huawei stole its technology and pressured it to build a “back door” into a sensitive law-enforcement project in Pakistan. The Wall Street Journal
ASPI ICPC
‘Influence for hire’ networks are manipulating online discussions throughout the Asia Pacific region
.Coda
@mariamkiparoize
Commercial “influence-for-hire” services are increasingly manipulating online discussions by promoting government policies in countries throughout the Asia Pacific region, according to the new report published this week, by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), an Australian-based think tank.
Read our report 'Influence for hire. The Asia-Pacific’s online shadow economy.'
The World
After criticism, Apple to only seek abuse images flagged in multiple nations
Reuters
@josephmenn @StephenNellis
After a week of criticism over a its planned new system for detecting images of child sex abuse, Apple Inc said on Friday that it will hunt only for pictures that have been flagged by clearinghouses in multiple countries.
Australia
Foreign investment crackdown risks ‘strangling’ tech
InnovationAus
@denhamsadler
Australian tech companies which receive any funding from overseas defence or national security agencies will be subject to the new national security test under new reforms which risk “strangling” early-stage firms, Q-CTRL founder Professor Michael Biercuk says. Significant changes to Australia’s foreign investment rules passed Parliament late last year and are now in effect. The reforms included the scrapping of the monetary threshold, with all companies deemed to be “national security businesses” now subject to screening.
Inside Racism HQ: How home-grown neo-Nazis are plotting a white revolution
The Age
@Ageinvestigates @jttozer
Hidden inside the National Socialist Network is a mole, a pretend neo-Nazi... he has smuggled covert cameras and audio recording equipment into their headquarters and is weeks into an unprecedented information-gathering exercise to expose Australia’s secretive and violent white supremacist movement.
Australian Federal Police investigates ASC subsea cable cut off Perth
ITnews
Ry Crozier
The Australian Federal Police has opened an investigation into how a subsea fibre cable operated by Vocus was severed inside Perth’s cable protection zone earlier this month.
China
Alibaba details new sexual misconduct policies
Protocol China
@shenlulushen
After rape allegations of a female employee against her manager have provoked intense internal and public outrage, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba told workers on Thursday it had made strides on promised measures to prevent and address workplace sexual misconduct. In a letter addressed to employees, Alibaba said the company will form a Committee on Workplace Environment to handle "matters related but not limited to sexual harassment prevention." The committee will be chaired by the company's Deputy Chief People Officer Jane Jiang. Its initial members are five senior female executives. The committee will report directly to Alibaba's board and invite employees to join in the future.
Alibaba Employee Was Sexually Abused Multiple Times, Say Chinese Authorities
The Wall Street Journal
@Chao_Deng
Chinese authorities said they found that a female Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. employee was sexually abused both by her boss and a business client, supporting many details from an account by the woman that has rocked China’s internet in the past week.
CCTV watchdog criticises Hikvision Uyghur response
BBC
@radioproducer
The UK's CCTV watchdog has criticised a Chinese firm for not saying if its cameras are used in Uyghur internment camps. Professor Fraser Sampson, said: "If your company wasn't involved in these awful places wouldn't you be very keen to say so?"
Eight takeaways from Xiaomi founder Lei Jun’s viral speech
Protocol China
@ZeyiYang
As Jack Ma and other company leaders lay low, Lei Jun is becoming the most beloved tech figure in China.
USA
Intel CEO Pitches Pricey Chip Plants to Officials at Home and Abroad
The Wall Street Journal
@asafitch @bobdavis187
Intel Corp.’s chief executive and other board members met with Biden administration officials last month and held a rooftop reception near the White House to push a multibillion-dollar chip-investment plan, according to people familiar with the event. The gathering was only one stop for Pat Gelsinger, the Intel boss, in what has become a global tour to get facetime with government leaders—many worried about their countries’ access to chips at an unprecedented time of shortage… Mr. Gelsinger has struck a common note in those meetings, according to people familiar with the talks and documents, namely that Intel has big plans to build more chip factories that also can help fix an overconcentration of chip-making in Asia driven by lucrative incentives there. All it will take to level the playing field is a few billion dollars in subsidies.
T-Mobile Investigating Claims of Massive Customer Data Breach
VICE
@josephfcox
T-Mobile says it is investigating a forum post claiming to be selling a mountain of personal data. The forum post itself doesn't mention T-Mobile, but the seller told Motherboard they have obtained data related to over 100 million people, and that the data came from T-Mobile servers.
Accenture restores affected systems after reported ransomware attack
Reuters
Accenture said it has fully restored certain affected systems, after a CNBC reporter tweeted of a hacker group saying it attacked the IT consulting firm using LockBit ransomware and threatened to release the data in several hours.
The Co-Founder Of Snopes Wrote Dozens Of Plagiarized Articles For The Fact-Checking Site
BuzzFeed News
@shootingthemess
David Mikkelson, the co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes, has long presented himself as the arbiter of truth online, a bulwark in the fight against rumors and fake news. But he has been lying to the site's tens of millions of readers: A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that between 2015 and 2019, Mikkelson wrote and published dozens of articles containing material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times.
Misinformation at public forums vexes local boards, big tech
APNews
@DavidKlepper, Heather Hollingsworth
Videos of local government meetings have emerged as the latest vector of COVID-19 misinformation, broadcasting misleading claims about masks and vaccines to millions and creating new challenges for internet platforms trying to balance the potential harm against the need for government openness.
Inside America’s Covid-reporting breakdown
POLITICO
@ErinBanco
Crashing computers, three-week delays tracking infections, lab results delivered by snail mail: State officials detail a vast failure to identify hotspots quickly enough to prevent outbreaks.
Zillow, Other Tech Firms Are in an ‘Arms Race’ To Buy Up American Homes
VICE
Maxwell Strachan
"iBuyers" are gearing up to grow massively in the coming years, with unforeseen consequences for the U.S. housing market.
Cyber preparedness could save America's 'unsinkable aircraft carrier'
The Hill
Claude Barfield, @wr_rau
The U.S. might consider equipping regional military bases with cyber and internet experts who could better act on early intelligence because of their proximity to Taiwan by scrambling teams and technologies — namely, satellite-based networks and high-altitude balloons — to help reconnect Taiwan to the internet.
Southeast Asia
New report reveals opportunities to address weak security in APAC organisations
ITnews
Cloud security specialist Barracuda has released a new report – The State of Application Security in 2021 – revealing interesting insights about the application security threat landscape globally and in the Asia Pacific region.
South & Central Asia
Huawei Accused in Suit of Installing Data ‘Back Door’ in Pakistan Project
The Wall Street Journal
@DanStrumpf @waqargillani
A long-running dispute between Huawei Technologies Co. and a small U.S.-based contractor has escalated to U.S. federal court, with the contractor alleging Huawei stole its technology and pressured it to build a “back door” into a sensitive law-enforcement project in Pakistan.
Huawei stole our tech and created a 'backdoor' to spy on Pakistan, claims IT biz
The Register
@ThomasClaburn
A California-based IT consultancy has sued Huawei and its subsidiary in Pakistan alleging the Chinese telecom firm stole its trade secrets and failed to honor a contract to develop technology for Pakistani authorities.
UK
Facebook, Giphy Tech Tie-Up Falls Foul of U.K. Regulator
Bloomberg Law
@jeremylawhodges
Facebook Inc.’s takeover of Giphy will harm the competition for display advertising in U.K. and social media, the U.K.’s antitrust watchdog has provisionally found, adding to a string of regulatory headaches for the Silicon Valley giant. The watchdog has taken an initial view that “the only effective way to address the competition issues,” is for Facebook to sell Giphy “in its entirety, to a suitable buyer,” the Competition and Markets Authority said in a note published Thursday. It has set a Sept. 2 deadline for feedback on its provisional findings.
Europe
AlgorithmWatch forced to shut down Instagram monitoring project after threats from Facebook
AlgorithmWatch
@nicolaskb
Digital platforms play an ever-increasing role in structuring and influencing public debate. Civil society watchdogs, researchers and journalists need to be able to hold them to account. But Facebook is increasingly fighting those who try. It shut down New York University’s Ad Observatory last week, and went after AlgorithmWatch, too. The European Parliament and EU Member States must act now to prevent further bullying.
Open Letter to EU Lawmakers: Use the DSA to Stop Platforms from Suppressing Public Interest Research
AlgorithmWatch
Americas
Military propaganda exercise that caused panic about wolves on the loose "lacked oversight" - investigation finds
Ottawa Citizen
@davidpugliese
A Canadian Forces propaganda exercise that panicked residents in Nova Scotia with tales of wolves on the loose was the result of incompetence and soldiers acting without authorization, a newly released military investigation has revealed… Most of the members of the propaganda unit involved in the exercise were untrained in how to conduct what the military calls influence activities, the investigation determined. Still, they developed a scenario to test the loudspeakers by generating wolf noises, although the reason for selecting those types of sounds wasn’t clear.
Middle East
Indra — Hackers Behind Recent Attacks on Iran
Research Checkpoint
On July 9th and 10th, 2021 Iranian Railways and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development systems became the subject of targeted cyber attacks. Check Point Research investigated these attacks and found multiple evidence that these attacks heavily rely on the attacker’s previous knowledge and reconnaissance of the targeted networks. The attacks on Iran were found to be tactically and technically similar to previous activity against multiple private companies in Syria which was carried at least since 2019. We were able to tie this activity to a threat group that identify themselves as regime opposition group, named Indra.
Gender and Women in Cyber
All-Girl Robotics Team In Afghanistan Works On Low-Cost Ventilator ... With Car Parts
NPR
@diaahadid, Khwaga Ghani
In Afghanistan, a group of teenage girls are trying to build a mechanized, hand-operated ventilator for coronavirus patients, using a design from M.I.T. and parts from old Toyota Corollas.
Misc
Facebook is bringing end-to-end encryption to Messenger calls and Instagram DMs
TechCrunch
@CarlyPage_
Facebook has extended the option of using end-to-end encryption for Messenger voice calls and video calls.
YouTube Poses Rising Competition—for Publishers on YouTube
The Information
@sizpatel
YouTube’s ad business is booming. But one group of YouTube program producers—media companies that sell their own ad spots on the platform—are finding the boom isn’t quite as bountiful. The Google-owned video giant has become so adept at selling ad space through automated auctions that it is now massively underpricing those publishers that sell ad spots directly on their YouTube programs.
‘Likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online
Yale News
Bill Hathaway
The Yale team measured the expression of moral outrage on Twitter during real life controversial events and studied the behaviors of subjects in controlled experiments designed to test whether social media’s algorithms, which reward users for posting popular content, encourage outrage expressions. “This is the first evidence that some people learn to express more outrage over time because they are rewarded by the basic design of social media,” Brady said.
Is Your Password Worth $500,000 To Ransomware Gangs?
Forbes
@happygeek
Selling access to networks is both a more significant and smaller business than you might imagine. One thing's for sure: there's big money being made by bad actors.
Jobs
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.