Tech giants Microsoft, Amazon warn of widespread software flaw | Historic Australia-South Korea billion-dollar defence contract | China's SenseTime postpones $767 mln Hong Kong IPO after U.S. ban
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Cybersecurity officials at major tech companies are scrambling to patch a serious flaw in a widely used piece of internet software that security experts warn could unleash a new round of cyberattacks. The bug, hidden in an obscure piece of server software called Log4j, has prompted investigations into the depth of the problem within Amazon.com Inc., Twitter Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. The Australian
Australia's Defence Force has formally locked in a billion-dollar weapons contract with South Korea, in what is believed to be this country's largest-ever military deal with an Asian nation. ABC
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime Group postponed its $767 million Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) on Monday after being placed on a U.S. investment blacklist. Reuters
ASPI ICPC
Summit for democracy: Need global norms for crypto, social media, says PM Modi
Indian Express
Harikishan Sharma
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday said the international community must jointly shape global norms for technology such as “social media and cryptocurrencies” so that they are used to empower democracy, “not undermine it". This is the second instance in recent times that Modi has underlined the need for global norms for emerging technologies like cryptocurrencies on the world stage. Last month, addressing the Sydney Dialogue, Modi cited cryptocurrency or bitcoin and said: “It is important that all democratic nations work together on this and ensure it does not end up in the wrong hands, which can spoil our youth.”
World
Log4Shell attacks began two weeks ago, Cisco and Cloudflare say
The Record
Catalin Cimpanu
Although mass exploitation started over the weekend, this revelation means that security teams need to broaden their incident response investigations and check for signs of possible exploitation against their networks to the start of the month, just to be on the safe side.
Tech giants Microsoft, Amazon and others warn of widespread software flaw
The Australian
Robert McMillan
Cybersecurity officials at major tech companies are scrambling to patch a serious flaw in a widely used piece of internet software that security experts warn could unleash a new round of cyberattacks. The bug, hidden in an obscure piece of server software called Log4j, has prompted investigations into the depth of the problem within Amazon.com Inc., Twitter Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc., according to the companies.
Australia
Historic billion-dollar defence contract with South Korea amid rising regional tensions
ABC
Andrew Greene & Stephen Dziedzic
Australia's Defence Force has formally locked in a billion-dollar weapons contract with South Korea, in what is believed to be this country's largest-ever military deal with an Asian nation. South Korean defence giant Hanwha will build 30 self-propelled howitzers and 15 armoured ammunition resupply vehicles for the army in Geelong.
South Korea’s and Australia’s shared future is about a lot more than armoured vehicles
The Strategist
Michael Shoebridge
South Korea is one of the planet’s ‘big tech’ leaders in both the commercial and defence worlds (think LG, Samsung, Hyundai, Hanwha, Korea Aerospace Industries, LIG Nex1 and others) so it must be part of growing minilateral and bilateral cooperation to make high-technology supply chains more resilient and less vulnerable to natural or state-directed shocks. ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue would be the right forum for this, because unlike the Quad and AUKUS, it’s about bringing governments and their key technology firms together, with a focus on common goals. It’s about changing the largely adversarial and regulatory relationship that governments like those of the US and Australia (along with the EU) have with the ‘big tech’ world.
$15b NT hydrogen project to suck water from air
Australian Financial Review
Angela Macdonald-Smith
A $US10.75 billion ($15 billion) green hydrogen project in the Northern Territory will use novel technology intended to beat the problem of scarce water plaguing similar renewables-based projects as it targets exports as early as 2027.
Her Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished.
The New York Times
Maddison Connaughton
Five days after Facebook changed its name to Meta, an Australian artist found herself blocked, with seemingly no recourse, from an account documenting nearly a decade of her life and work.
China
China's SenseTime postpones $767 mln Hong Kong IPO after U.S. ban
Reuters
Kane Wu & Scott Murdoch
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime Group postponed its $767 million Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) on Monday after being placed on a U.S. investment blacklist. Reuters first reported earlier on Monday the company's plan to withdraw the offering and update its prospectus to include the potential impact of the U.S. investment ban, with the aim of relaunching the IPO process.
DiDi’s delisting is China’s new normal
Protocol
Shen Lu
Beijing passed the Data Security Law and the Personal Information Protection Law this year to rein in tech companies and restrict data transfer to foreign countries. Beijing also reportedly plans to ban domestic companies handling sensitive data from listing abroad through so-called variable interest entities (VIEs), which DiDi and most other tech heavyweights used for the past two decades to bypass foreign investment restrictions on overseas listings.
Will China’s Regulatory ‘Great Wall’ Hamper AI Ambitions?
The Diplomat
Ellen Lu & Ryan Fedasiuk
China’s push for data security and algorithmic governance should be viewed as a new chapter in the country’s storied attempts to regulate the technology sector. In all likelihood, these moves will minimally affect state security bureaus’ data collection capabilities, but will create steep compliance costs for internet companies that could hamper the state’s long-term development goals.
Chinese government deploying online influencers amid Beijing Olympics boycotts
Open Secrets
Anna Massoglia
The Chinese government hired a firm to recruit social media influencers as part of a new digital operation amid controversies surrounding diplomatic boycotts of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The influence operation is being coordinated by Vippi Media, a consulting firm based in New Jersey, as part of a $300,000 contract that spans through March 2022. China’s Consulate General in New York paid $210,000 in advance on Nov. 23.
Alibaba Fires Female Employee Who Accused Then-Supervisor of Sexual Assault
The Wall Street Journal
Sha Hua
Alibaba has fired a female employee who accused her then-supervisor of molestation and rape during a business trip earlier this year, according to the woman and her lawyer, refocusing attention on a sexual-assault case that sent ripples through China’s tech sector.
USA
Now in Your Inbox: Political Misinformation
The New York Times
Maggie Astor
Lawmakers’ statements on social media and cable news are now routinely fact-checked and scrutinized. But email — one of the most powerful communication tools available to politicians, reaching up to hundreds of thousands of people — teems with unfounded claims and largely escapes notice.
Democracy and its digital discontents under the microscope at Biden summit
Daily Maverick
Peter Fabricius
US President Joe Biden’s virtual democracy summit rallied the world’s democracies to defend their endangered institution — especially in cyberspace.
America’s Open Secret
The Wire China
Matt Schiavenza
Ever since FDR's tenure, the U.S. government has periodically questioned, and then affirmed, its hands-off approach to American universities. China's rise changed all that.
North-East Asia
A South Korean city will test facial recognition as a way to track the virus.
The New York Times
Jin Yu Young
The system will be tested in January in Bucheon, a metropolitan area of 800,000 people on the edge of Seoul, the country’s capital. City officials hope the system can help trace the recent movements of people who test positive, their interactions with other people and whether masks were worn.
South Asia
India’s opposition raises alarm over Modi’s hacked Twitter
AP
On Monday, opposition Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the hacking incident raised serious national security concerns and pressed the government to clarify whether it plans to recognize cryptocurrency, reported the Press Trust of India news agency. “If the prime minister’s Twitter handle is compromised twice in two years, how can we be assured of the security of the nation? India’s security is under threat,” he said speaking before Parliament’s lower house.
Europe
Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees
The Guardian
Kaamil Ahmed & Lorenzo Tondo
From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.
Germany: ‘Critical’ cybersecurity flaw already exploited
AP
Germany has activated its national IT crisis center in response to an “extremely critical” flaw in a widely used software tool that the government says has already been exploited internationally. A spokesman for Germany’s Interior Ministry said the country’s federal IT safety agency is urging users to patch their systems as quickly as possible to fend off possible attacks using a bug in the Log4J tool.
The Americas
Facing cybersecurity threats, Quebec shuts down government websites for evaluation
CBC
Holly Cabrera
Quebec will be shutting down close to 4,000 government websites following the threat of an international cyberattack on a widely used logging system. Some 3,992 provincial government websites could be at risk, including those related to health, education and public administration, according to Éric Caire, Quebec's minister for government digital transformation.
Middle East
Satellite images, expert suggest Iranian space launch coming
AP
Jon Gambrell
Iran appears to be preparing for a space launch as negotiations continue in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers, according to an expert and satellite images.
Tiandy Iran brags about Intel Inside, Intel investigating
IPVM
Charles Rollet
Tiandy Iran openly bragged about how "the heart" of its K2000 server "is designed and manufactured by Intel" in an Instagram post, raising sanction violation concerns of US technology being sold to Iran.
Events
Research
Global Insights | Innovation in Counter-Disinformation: Toward globally networked civil society
NED
In her Nobel Peace Prize lecture on December 10, 2021, Filipino journalist Maria Ressa called for a global response to the challenge of disinformation driven by new technologies. The five interdisciplinary essays in this “Global Insights” collection spotlight innovative perspectives and new methods for countering disinformation. On the heels of the Summit for Democracy, where preserving the integrity of the information space was identified as a key challenge, these essays by journalists, scholars, and civil society activists envision a globally networked response to the disinformation challenge.
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.