Russian hacker group says cyber attacks continue on Lithuania | Chinese posed as Texans on social media to attack rare earths rivals | Indian Govt asks Twitter to 'take down' Freedom House's tweets
Good morning. It's Wednesday 29th June.
The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.
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Russian hacker group Killnet told Reuters that it was continuing a major cyber attack on Lithuania on Tuesday in retaliation for Vilnius's decision to cease the transit of some goods under European Union sanctions to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave. Reuters
An English-language social media propaganda effort that previously criticized Hong Kong protesters and other foes of the Chinese government and has been linked to China has taken the rare step of going after private companies in a strategic industry, researchers said Tuesday. The Washington Post
The Indian government has asked Twitter to take down tweets by Freedom House on declining internet freedom in India, Entrackr reported today. The tweets in question had allegedly promoted Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2021 report. Newslaundry
Ukraine - Russia
Russian hacker group says cyber attacks continue on Lithuania
Reuters
Russian hacker group Killnet told Reuters that it was continuing a major cyber attack on Lithuania on Tuesday in retaliation for Vilnius's decision to cease the transit of some goods under European Union sanctions to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave.
Russian hacking group takes credit for wide-ranging cyberattack on Lithuania
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
A hacking group aligned with the Russian government took credit for a large cyberattack on several government institutions in Lithuania on Monday. The country’s defense minister and National Cyber Security Centre released a statement saying the hackers had used distributed denial-of-service attacks to target the State Tax Inspectorate, Migration Department and a secure national data network among a host of other state entities.Could the Russian cyber attack on Lithuania draw a military response from NATO?
Sky News
Rowland Manthorpe
Normally the meaning of this would be frighteningly clear, but this is an attack with a difference: not a physical attack, but a cyber attack; and working out what a cyber attack means is never simple. The NATO member in question is the Baltic state of Lithuania, which was targeted on Monday by Russian hackers. According to the hackers, the attack is still going on.
China
Chinese posed as Texans on social media to attack rare earths rivals
The Washington Post
Joseph Menn
An English-language social media propaganda effort that previously criticized Hong Kong protesters and other foes of the Chinese government and has been linked to China has taken the rare step of going after private companies in a strategic industry, researchers said Tuesday.
Chinese influence operation aimed to protect Beijing's stake in rare earth mining, research finds
CyberScoop
AJ Vicens
A Chinese influence operation unsuccessfully tried to mobilize U.S. protests against an Australian rare earths mining company planning an expansion in Texas in an effort to defend Beijing’s dominance in the market, researchers with cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Tuesday.
JD.com founder Richard Liu cashes out nearly US$1 billion from e-commerce giant
South China Morning Post
Yaling Jiang
JD.com founder Richard Liu Qiangdong has cashed out nearly US$1 billion from the e-commerce giant he founded since stepping down from the chief executive role in April, prompting speculation over what he may do with the proceeds, according to public filings.
The rise and precarious reign of China’s battery king
WIRED
Morgan Meaker
You may have never heard of CATL, but you’ve definitely heard of the brands that rely on its batteries. The company supplies more than 30 percent of the world’s EV batteries and counts Tesla, Kia and BMW amongst its clients.
USA
Cyber Command urges private sector to share intelligence, aid defensive digital operations
CyberScoop
Suzanne Smalley
U.S. Cyber Command wants more tech companies and others on the front lines of the global fight to secure the internet to share more cybersecurity intelligence so that the organization can improve its defensive capabilities, Cyber Command Executive Director Dave Frederick said in an interview Monday.
US ‘smart city’ tech highlights contrasts with China over privacy and control
South China Morning Post
Mark Magnier
Parking, however smart, may seem dull. But Redwood City’s hi-tech system is helping revitalise the downtown area, increase business and tax revenue and reduce congestion, pollution and accidents, even as powerful smart city tools raise concerns.
This co-worker does not exist: FBI warns of deepfakes interviewing for tech jobs
TechCrunch
Devin Coldewey
A lot of people are worried about the prospect of competing with AI for their jobs, but this probably isn’t what they were expecting. The FBI has warned of an uptick in cases where “deepfakes” and stolen personal information are being used to apply for jobs in the U.S. — including faking video interviews. Don’t dust off the Voight-Kampff test just yet, though.
Blow for Trump’s Truth Social as merger company hit by grand jury subpoenas
The Guardian
Dominic Rushe
A US federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to the board members of the company merging with Donald Trump’s social media company, Truth Social. The disclosure, made on Monday by the blank cheque company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, is the latest blow to Trump’s plans to take Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the creator of Truth Social, public.
Canadian NetWalker ransomware defendant agrees to plead guilty in US court
CyberScoop
AJ Vicens
A Canadian man arrested early last year for his role in the NetWalker ransomware attacks agreed to plead guilty to four charges that could earn him a maximum of 40 years in prison, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
North Asia
Taiwan official calls for approval of U.S. computer chip subsidies
The Washington Post
Jeanne Whalen
Taiwan’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer has started building a computer-chip factory in Arizona and is hiring U.S. engineers and sending them to Taiwan for training, but the pace of construction will depend on Congress approving federal subsidies, a Taiwanese minister said Tuesday.
South & Central Asia
Indian Govt asks Twitter to 'take down' Freedom House's tweets on declining internet freedom in India: Entrackr
Newslaundry
The Indian government has asked Twitter to take down tweets by Freedom House on declining internet freedom in India, Entrackr reported today. The tweets in question had allegedly promoted Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2021 report.
Mohammed Zubair: Indian police arrest Modi critic over tweets
BBC
Police in India have arrested the co-founder of a fact-checking website who has been a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Mohammed Zubair of AltNews has been accused of insulting Hindu religious beliefs on Twitter, a network of media organisations said.
Twitter "withholds" journalist Rana Ayyub's account in India
NDTV
Journalist Rana Ayyub posted a notice from Twitter on Sunday which informed her that the microblogging site has withheld her account in India under Information Technology Act, 2000.
UK
The UK wants to boost AI development by removing data mining hurdles
TechCrunch
Paul Sawers
The U.K. is planning to tweak an existing law to allow text and data mining “for any purpose,” in a move that’s designed to boost artificial intelligence (AI) development across the country.
UK decides AI still cannot patent inventions
BBC
Chris Vallance
The UK's Intellectual Property Office has decided artificial-intelligence systems cannot patent inventions for the time being. Patents assign the ownership of a new invention to its creator.
Big Tech
Google says attackers worked with ISPs to deploy Hermit spyware on Android and iOS
The Verge
Emma Roth
A sophisticated spyware campaign is getting the help of internet service providers (ISPs) to trick users into downloading malicious apps, according to research published by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) (via TechCrunch). This corroborates earlier findings from security research group Lookout, which has linked the spyware, dubbed Hermit, to Italian spyware vendor RCS Labs.
Instagram and Facebook remove posts offering abortion pills
Associated Press
Amanda Seitz
Facebook and Instagram have begun promptly removing posts that offer abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them following a Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for the procedure.
Facebook is banning people who say they will mail abortion pills
VICE
Joseph Cox
Facebook is removing the posts of users who share status updates that say abortion pills can be mailed and in some cases temporarily banning those users.
Uber ex-security chief accused of hacking coverup must face fraud charges, judge rules
Reuters
Jonathan Stempel
A federal judge on Tuesday said a former Uber Technologies Inc security chief must face wire fraud charges over his alleged role in trying to cover up a 2016 hacking that exposed personal information of 57 million passengers and drivers.
The open secret of Google search
The Atlantic
Charlie Warzel
Like many, I use Google to answer most of the mundane questions that pop up in my day-to-day life. And yet that first page of search results feels like it’s been surfacing fewer satisfying answers lately. I’m not alone; the frustration has become a persistent meme: that Google Search, what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or dying.
Elon Musk got Twitter’s data dump, next comes the hard part
The Wall Street Journal
Sarah E. Needleman
Elon Musk has gained access to the Twitter Inc. data that he said was needed to complete his $44 billion acquisition, but data scientists and specialists doubt the stream will provide the conclusive answers he seeks about the number of phony accounts on the platform.
Misc
EY valued NSO Group at $2.3bn months before emergency bailout
Financial Times
Kaye Wiggins and Mehul Srivastava
EY, the Big Four accounting firm, valued the secretive Israeli spyware company NSO Group at $2.3bn just months before it needed emergency funding in a cash crunch and its equity was deemed worthless.
Spotting objects from space is easy. This challenge is harder
WIRED
Sarah Scoles
This video was a way to show the long-term changes you can see with data in Google Earth. This time-lapse record of Dubai’s 38-year synthetic evolution relied on archival shots taken of a single location during a period when large-scale construction was happening. And it’s the work an intelligence community R&D agency called the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is trying to take a giant leap further through a program dubbed Smart.
Research
Read the report here
Data as a Weapon: The Evolution of Hong Kong Protesters’ Doxing Strategies
Social Science Computer Review
Yao-Tai Li and Katherine Whitworth
When the Hong Kong government began to more forcefully suppress and monitor the protest, data became a contentious object as well as a weapon in the repertoire of political struggle. Taking the protesters’ collective initiative of doxing the policemen and their families as an example, this article examines protesters’ engagement with data during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB Movement.
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