U.S., U.K. officials warn of cyberattacks on hospitals | Russian hackers accessed emails from Merkel's office | Putin Bans Armed Forces Members From Carrying Electronic Devices
Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.
Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and the U.K. are citing an increase in "malicious cyber campaigns" targeting hospitals, medical institutions and others involved in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. NBC News
Russia's GRU military intelligence service appears to have got hold of many emails from Chancellor Angela Merkel's constituency office in a 2015 hack attack on Germany's parliament, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday, without citing its sources. Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree banning members of the armed forces from carrying smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets capable of recording and storing information while on duty. Radio Free Europe
ASPI ICPC
Privacy assurances to boost COVIDSafe downloads despite crossbench concerns
The Sydney Morning Herald
Former UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction head Robert Glasser congratulated the government for the "unique governance mechanisms" put in place to deal with the pandemic this week during a webcast for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.. "My recommendation to the Prime Minister would be that the government document those innovations that have generic applications to other disasters because climate change is increasing the frequency [and] severity of national-scale disasters similar to what we've seen in this last bushfire season and so we're going to need those innovations sooner than we think," he said.
The World
U.S., U.K. officials warn of cyberattacks on hospitals, research facilities on coronavirus front lines
NBC News
Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and the U.K. are citing an increase in "malicious cyber campaigns" targeting hospitals, medical institutions and others involved in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the alert here.
Read a Strategist article by ICPC's Joclinn Kang and Tom Uren about cyber attacks on hospitals.
Australia
Australia's National Intelligence Office seeks 'smart' satellites
ZD Net
@ashabeeeee
The Australian government, through the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), is hoping to progress research on "smart" satellites. In a request for tender (RFT), ONI is seeking a provider of research and engineering services in order to develop, build, test, launch, and operate a prototype or proof-of-concept smart satellite to demonstrate the application of miniaturised satellite systems with on-board machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
DTA publicly releases COVIDSafe application source code
DTA
Today the Digital Transformation Agency released to the public the source code for the COVIDSafe application. Any member of the public can view the source code, which is hosted on a GitHub repository.
Half-baked: The COVIDSafe app is not fit for purpose on iPhones
The Sydney Morning Herald
The COVIDSafe app doesn't work on iPhones in the way it was sold to Australians - at least not yet.
Questions raised over alleged Chinese hacking attempt on WA Premier Mark McGowan's office
ABC
@jamescarmody95
The first West Australian Premier Mark McGowan knew of an attempted cyber attack against his office, reportedly originating from China, was through a news article in the New York Times.
Data company that 'helped locate Osama Bin Laden' recruits former Labor MP Mike Kelly
ABC
A United States tech giant with close links to Western intelligence agencies has appointed former Federal Labor MP Mike Kelly to help drive its rapidly expanding operations in Australia.
Coronavirus: Pandemic shows up the gaps in military defences
The Australian
The paper examines emerging and disruptive technologies, such as sea mines or swarms of weaponised drones controlled by artificial intelligence, the emergence of hypersonic weapons, high-speed and long-range weapons, which have huge implications for the ability of a military asset to defend itself.. Naturally, the paper examines issues such as cyber warfare, which continues to grow rapidly in our region, and more traditional questions such as terrorism.
AI on my device, not in the cloud
Australia’s Chief Scientist
@ScienceChiefAu
"We must always remember this basic truth: no matter how fast the pace of AI innovation, it must never surpass the primacy of human rights." Dr Finkel provided a video address for the launch of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics (CAIDE) on Monday 20 March 2020.
USA
Clearview AI Has Promised To Cancel All Relationships With Private Companies
Buzzfeed News
Facing numerous lawsuits, the New York startup said it "is cancelling the accounts of every customer who was not either associated with law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency.”
Twitter disputes State Department claims China coordinated coronavirus disinformation accounts
CNN
@jmhansler @donie @kylieatwood
Twitter pushed back on an assertion from the US State Department Friday that it was "highly probable" that the Chinese government coordinated networks of Twitter accounts to disseminate disinformation related to the coronavirus outbreak, saying their initial review of the accounts in question does not support the government's claims.
Reporting an Attribution Claim from Anonymous Sources
Attribution News
As the novel coronavirus spread through the United States in mid-March, so did mis- and disinformation about impending governmental action.
US expects Russia to target Covid-19 vaccine in disinformation campaign
The National UAE
@CallumPaton1
The US expects Russia will attempt to erode faith in a future Covid-19 vaccine as part of its disinformation campaign about the virus. US special envoy Lea Gabrielle told reporters Washington was working with allies to see off a campaign to discredit a possible vaccine.
UK
UK could switch to a different contact tracing app, says minister
The Financial Times
The UK is prepared to adapt or replace the smartphone contact tracing app it has developed for coronavirus if a trial on the Isle of Wight proves that necessary, communities secretary Robert Jenrick said on Sunday.
Huawei and the Cameron Connection
Convervative Woman
Yesterday, in advance of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to London, Bruce Newsome wrote of America’s consternation at Britain’s ignoring its warning about allowing Huawei access to the UK’s cyber infrastructure. Today he looks back at the history of Huawei’s links with the UK and its encouragement by British politicians and officialdom.
Europe
Russian hackers accessed emails from Merkel's constituency office
Reuters
Russia's GRU military intelligence service appears to have got hold of many emails from Chancellor Angela Merkel's constituency office in a 2015 hack attack on Germany's parliament, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday, without citing its sources.
The Geopolitics of Standardisation
Directions Blog
As cybersecurity threats put sovereignty at risk, digital standardisation is getting caught in the maelstrom of geopolitics. The 5G debate – the “geopolitical moment” in the digital transition – showed that most governments largely ignored standardisation at their peril. What is needed is a revised governance of standardisation that is fit for global collaboration and that respects sovereignty.
Poland Presidential Election 2020: Disinformation Strikes the Military
Stanford Internet Observatory
Amid increasing political turmoil and a potential constitutional crisis, Poland was recently targeted by an elaborate disinformation operation. We studied the tactics used by the attackers and discovered a previously unknown connection to the website Niezależny Dziennik Polityczny, which has previously been accused of having ties to Russian intelligence.
Russia
Putin Bans Armed Forces Members From Carrying Electronic Devices, Gadgets
Radio Free Europe
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree banning members of the armed forces from carrying smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets capable of recording and storing information while on duty. According to the decree, signed on May 6, military personnel may not possess gadgets that can track locations and transmit audio and photo materials.
Canada
Canada should stand up to China, ex-Australia PM says
The Globe and Mail
@mariekewalsh
Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says the only way to deal with China is to make sure Canada stands up to the superpower, and while he doesn’t want to tell Canada what to do, he believes it would be prudent to ban Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. from Canada’s 5G network.. “An adversary with a permanent beachhead in an economy’s most important enabling platform technology would have the ability to make all or parts of the network – or devices and institutions within it – unavailable or unresponsive," he wrote. “Our approach was a hedge against a future threat: not the identification of a smoking gun but a loaded one.”
Trudeau says no security risks in Chinese takeover of Canadian satellite firm
Financial Post
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is making his strongest defence yet of his government’s decision to allow a Chinese telecom giant to take over a Canadian satellite technology company.
Middle East
A passwordless server run by spyware maker NSO sparks contact-tracing privacy concerns
Tech Crunch
@zachwhittaker
While most governments lean toward privacy-focused apps that use Bluetooth signals to create an anonymous profile of a person’s whereabouts, others, like Israel, use location and cell phone data to track the spread of the virus. Israel-based private security firm NSO Group, known for making mobile hacking tools, is leading one of Israel’s contact-tracing efforts.
Iran-linked hackers recently targeted coronavirus drugmaker Gilead
Reuters
@jc_stubbs @Bing_Chris
Hackers linked to Iran have targeted staff at U.S. drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc in recent weeks, according to publicly-available web archives reviewed by Reuters and three cybersecurity researchers, as the company races to deploy a treatment for the COVID-19 virus.
Misc
Micro but mighty: Semiconductors remain the key to technology leadership
The Japan Times
Data may be the “oil” of the information economy, but without microelectronics, those data are just assortments of zeros and ones. Semiconductors, silicon-based “translators” of data into information, are essential to the 21st century economy, making connectivity and all the resulting “information-related” innovations possible.
Digital Threats to Democracy: The Online Brain
CNAS
@mninamiller
A growing reliance on digital systems is gradually subverting human cognition by making it more difficult for individuals to maintain attention, remember information, and think critically.
Research
Digital welfare: designing for more nuanced forms of access
Taylor & Francis Online
The aim of many forms of digitalized welfare is to offer a personalized, holistic service that is affordable, sustainable, efficient, encouraging and leaves room for voluntary action. We argue that for these goals to be achieved, consideration has to be given both to the design of the system delivered by the welfare provider and to the ecosystem that further shapes the experience of the system.