Russia says it is slowing access to Twitter | UK ambassador rebuffs Beijing broadside against press freedom comments | China plans for a world without American tech
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Moscow accused the social network of failing to remove content it deemed illegal. Soon after, a raft of government websites suffered a short outage. The New York Times
The British ambassador to China has defended her call for greater press freedom in the country as a spat between London and Beijing over media coverage intensified.Financial Times
Beijing’s leaders plot a path to go it alone, vowing to spend big to fill gaps in innovation and avoid dependence on the United States and others. The New York Times
ASPI ICPC
UK ambassador rebuffs Beijing broadside against press freedom comments
Financial Times
The BBC has borne the brunt of the hostility, with the UK public broadcaster’s news channel banned in China last month. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute think-tank has described a “co-ordinated information operation” by “Chinese state media, pro-CCP influencers and patriotic trolls” targeting the BBC on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The US platforms are blocked in China but state media and foreign ministry spokespeople increasingly use them to reach foreign audiences.
Cyber attacks raise concern in Australia and the U.S.
ABC Radio
Australia's Cyber Security Centre has issued a high alert. This comes after the centre identified extensive targeting of Australian organisations using a common piece of Microsoft software.The cyber-attacks from a Chinese state-based actor have caused concern in Australia and the U.S. with cyber criminals now also exploiting the vulnerability. Tom Uren from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute spoke to ABC NewsRadio’s Jamie Travers.
How Australia Can Supercharge Its Digital Engagement with South-East Asia
Australian Foreign Affairs
Huong Le Thu on how Australia can supercharge its Digital Engagement with South-East Asia “Digital, technology and science capabilities are critical for the longer-term post-COVID recovery. In helping to fund them across South-East Asia, Australia will forge durable economic ties with partners in the region.”
World
The internet is splitting apart. The Internet Archive wants to save it all forever.
Protocol
@anna_c_kramer
The Internet Archive has grand ambitions for preserving the internet. But in order to do that, Big Tech has to stay out of the way.
Australia
Ransomware ‘on the rise’
The Australian
@swan_legend
Amid growing fears thousands of Australian businesses have been caught up in a massive China ransomware attack, a new joint report from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Telstra chief Andy Penn has found 62 per cent of Australian businesses have experienced a cyber security attack, a figure that‘s on the rise.
China
Xi’s Gambit: China Plans for a World Without American Technology
The New York Times
@paulmozur @stevenleemyers
Beijing’s leaders plot a path to go it alone, vowing to spend big to fill gaps in innovation and avoid dependence on the United States and others.
Russia and China want to build a Moon station together
Axios
@mirikramer
Russia and China today announced that the two nations plan to cooperate to create a scientific research station on the Moon. Why it matters: Countries are turning their attention to landing people on the Moon in the coming years, and this partnership between China and Russia — a long-time U.S. partner in space — shows just how much the geopolitical landscape in space is changing.
Chinese Technology Stocks Have Fallen Harder Than U.S. Peers
WSJ
U.S. technology stocks have slipped into correction territory. Chinese technology stocks have fallen even more.
Electric vehicles will account for three out of five new cars on China’s roads by 2030, UBS forecasts
SCMP
Daniel Ren & Pearl Liu
The pace of electrification on China’s roads will accelerate, with three out of five new cars powered by battery packs by 2030, according to a forecast by UBS. The Swiss bank expects China to sell 6.6 million electric cars in 2025, about 25 per cent of all new cars, rising dramatically to 18 million, or 60 per cent, by 2030.
Bitcoin mining is still huge in China despite new ban in Inner Mongolia
SupChina
@qifrida
New regulations slowed down and shrank the market for bitcoin, but they did not make mining, owning, buying, or selling cryptocurrencies illegal. In fact, Chinese law specifically protects virtual private property, and this includes virtual money. (As far back as 2003, Chinese courts have accepted and protected virtual items — including swords! — as property of their owners.)
USA
Biden set to double down on China tech denial
Nikkei Asia
@jamescrabtree
U.S. President Joe Biden launched a review of supply chain resilience last month, pledging a brisk 100-day rethink of semiconductor policies. One outcome is obvious: those in Beijing hoping the U.S. will ease its tech war will be disappointed.
Parler Blocked on Apple's App Store After Capitol Riot Review
Bloomberg
@WilliamTurton @markgurman
Parler, the controversial conservative social media app, was denied re-entry to Apple Inc.’s App Store recently after it was kicked off the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, documents obtained by Bloomberg show. On Wednesday, Parler LLC cut its three remaining iOS developers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company eliminated seven workers in total, most of whom were contractors. The other staff worked on Parler TV and quality assurance, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
Verkada Gave Various Employees Access To Any Camera Without Telling Customers
IPVM
@charlesrollet1
Various employees across Verkada used 'Super Admin' privileges to view any customer's camera footage at any time, unbeknownst to said customers, IPVM can reveal, based both on the hacker's confirmation and an interview with an individual with direct knowledge of the practice. This news comes after Verkada was hacked, exposing camera feeds for all of its ~150,000 cameras including those at Tesla, Cloudflare, and many other companies.
Massive camera hack exposes the growing reach and intimacy of American surveillance
The Washington Post
A breach of camera start-up Verkada ‘should be a wake-up call to the dangers of self-surveillance,’ one expert said. ‘Our desire for some fake sense of security is its own security threat.’
Encrypted Phone Firm Sky': Someone Sold Compromised Versions of Our App
VICE
@josephfcox
Sky ECC, an encrypted phone company whose users include criminals, claims someone created a fake version of its communication app, loaded that onto phones, and then sold those phones through "unauthorized channels," a representative for the company told Motherboard.
FBI warns malicious actors are plotting to use deepfakes in cyber, influence operations
CyberScoop
@shanvav
The FBI warned in an alert Wednesday that malicious actors “almost certainly” will be using deepfakes to advance their influence or cyber-operations in the coming weeks.
Toward a More Coercive Cyber Strategy
CSIS
@james_a_lewis
The United States is on the defensive. For more than 12 years, our great power opponents have held the initiative and scored success after success, while the United States remained in a reactive posture. These opponents have had their share of failures, but particularly in cyberspace, which is a focal point for conflict today, they have had an open field for action. The topic before us is how we can change this.
Facebook Files Motions to Dismiss Lawsuits Brought by FTC, State Attorneys General
Facebook Newsroom
Today we filed motions to dismiss the antitrust lawsuits brought by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. Antitrust laws are intended to promote competition and protect consumers. These complaints do not credibly claim that our conduct harmed either.
Facebook says it’s taking on Covid disinformation. So what’s all this?
WIRED UK
@CarlottaDotto @lydiamorrish
Last month, after more than a year of misinformation and falsehoods about Covid-19 proliferating on Facebook, the platform pledged to take down incorrect claims about Covid-19 and vaccines. It listed a range of specific, outrightly false statements it would remove, including that Covid-19 jabs are untested, contain toxic chemicals and kill people. Yet many of those claims are still live on Facebook – and some are gaining thousands of interactions before removal.
She brought diverse skin tones emoji to the iPhone. Now she’s suing Apple.
The Washington Post
@reedalbergotti
Katrina Parrott, a Black mother in Texas, created an iPhone app so her daughter could express herself. But after helping Apple, she claims, the company left her high and dry.
South-East Asia
Google to review adverts for Myanmar military-backed telecoms firm
Thomson Reuters
@f_potkin
Google said on Wednesday it is reviewing recent advertisements run by a Myanmar military-backed telecommunications firm and has disabled some army-linked accounts on its services in the wake of the country's coup.
Europe
TikTok Prompts EU Watchdog’s Warning on Data Being Sent to China
Bloomberg
@StephanieBodoni
TikTok Prompts EU Watchdog’s Warning on Data Being Sent to China By Stephanie BodoniBloomberg1 min View Original TikTok app on a smartphone. TikTok app on a smartphone. TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, may be sending some European Union user data to China, its main data-protection watchdog in the EU warned. “TikTok tells us that EU data is transferred to the U.S. and not to China, however we have understood that there is possibility that maintenance and AI engineers in China may be accessing data,” Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon said at an online event Wednesday.
Giant Datacenter Fire Takes Down Government Hacking Infrastructure
VICE News
@lorenzofb
A fire at a European datacenter has had some impact on the infrastructure used by several government and criminal hacking groups, according to Kaspersky Lab.
United Group to remove Huawei equipment from mobile network
TelecomLead
Balkan telecoms and media company United Group is considering switching parts or all of the Huawei equipment that dominates its infrastructure to alternative providers, as it seeks to align itself with the United States government.
Belgian and Dutch police take down encrypted criminal chat platform Sky ECC
The Record
@campuscodi
Law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands and Belgium have shut down today Sky ECC, a company that provided a secure encrypted messaging platform to criminal organizations across the world.
Russia
Russia Says It Is Slowing Access to Twitter
The New York Times
@antontroian & @AndrewKramerNYT
Moscow accused the social network of failing to remove content it deemed illegal. Soon after, a raft of government websites suffered a short outage.
Doug Madory @DougMadory
Russia's attempt to slow internet access to @twitter backfired today, knocking out mobile internet for many Russians. #KeepitOn @kentikinc netflow data shows two periods when traffic dropped by as much as 24% to RU state telecom Rostelecom starting 07:00UTC (10:00am local). https://t.co/JHvpzWEu6ERussia disrupting Twitter over 'illegal' content
AFP
Russia said Wednesday it planned to slow down Twitter for users in the country over what it said was the social media platform's failure to remove "illegal" content.
The Russian government just managed to hack itself
The Washington Post
Alexey Kovalev
Russia has a rich history of Internet censorship. The government’s “blacklist” of banned websites includes dozens of thousands of URLs, ranging from genuinely criminal online drug markets and illegal porn websites to opposition media and even LinkedIn. But its latest attempt to impose a ban has turned into a farce. On Monday, following an earlier court order and a long legal battle, Russia’s state media watchdog Roskomnadzor announced that Telegram, a popular messenger service, would be blocked in Russia. Russian security services claim that the company’s strong encryption has made it a tool of terrorists. Not only has the ban utterly failed to achieve its objective — at the time of this writing, Telegram remains available in Russia and is quickly gaining new users — but instead it’s harming dozens of entirely unrelated websites and online services.
Middle East
Inside Israel’s lucrative — and secretive —cybersurveillance industry
Rest Of World
@AmosBarshad
The country’s hacking software is recognized the world over. Not everyone thinks it’s a good thing.
Misc
Sci-Fi Writer or Prophet? The Hyperreal Life of Chen Qiufan
WIRED
@yilingliu95
As China’s science fiction authors are elevated to the status of oracles, Qiufan’s career—and his genre’s place in society—have gone through the looking glass.
For Creators, Everything Is for Sale
The New York Times
@taylorlorenz
Digital stars are coming up with new ways to make money. Yet fans still hold the power.
Research
Events
ASPI Webinar: Are you ready for the new critical infrastructure law?
ASPI ICPC
With amendments to the Critical Infrastructure Act currently before parliament, impacted industry sectors are racing to get ready. ASPI's International Cyber Policy Centre is delighted to invite you to a panel discussion on 18 March at 4pm where representatives from Home Affairs, the cybersecurity sector and industry will discuss the impact of the changes and answer your questions. Register here.
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