Aus gov't proposes up to seven years’ jail for doxing | Australia sends teams to Fiji as Chinese state-backed hackers attack PIF | Top EU privacy regulator opens probe into Google's AI compliance
Good morning. It's Thursday 12th September.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.
Follow us on Twitter and on LinkedIn.
The new proposed crime of doxing would be punishable by up to seven years in jail for targeting someone for their race, religion or sexuality but Labor has backed down on its proposal to outlaw hate speech and vilification against minority groups. The Guardian
The Australian government sent expert teams to Fiji this year to help the Pacific's top regional body after its networks were infiltrated by Chinese state-backed hackers. The cyber attack was "extensive" and the hackers intended to gather information about the operations of the Secretariat, according to sources. ABC
Google's lead EU privacy regulator opened an inquiry on Thursday into whether the search engine giant adequately protected European Union users' personal data before using it to help develop its foundational AI Model. Reuters
Australia
Labor bill proposes up to seven years’ jail for doxing but drops promised new hate speech laws
The Guardian
Paul Karp
The new proposed crime of doxing would be punishable by up to seven years in jail for targeting someone for their race, religion or sexuality but Labor has backed down on its proposal to outlaw hate speech and vilification against minority groups.
Defence slammed over cyber failures, lack of munitions
The Australian Financial Review
Andrew Tillett
The Defence Department – charged with overseeing the nation’s cybersecurity – has been castigated by the auditor-general over its failures to keep its own computer networks safe. In a scathing report highlighting the risk to the military’s sensitive computer networks, Defence was found to have breached its own rules, with some IT systems not being authorised for use for up to three years.
Media watchdog will have more power to force tech companies to crack down on disinformation under new bill
ABC News
David Speers & Maani Truu
The federal government will introduce a bill on Thursday that would grant Australia's media watchdog greater powers to pressure tech companies to crack down on misinformation and disinformation on their platforms. Exceptions for politically authorised and government content that were included in the draft bill have been scrapped.
Meta says an Advance Australia campaign to flood social media feeds with old news doesn't break the rules
ABC News
Oliver Gordon
Conservative lobby group Advance Australia is dressing old news articles up as new developments and paying Facebook's parent company Meta for the articles to appear in the news feeds of Australians. Facebook's parent company Meta told the ABC that they were "unable to locate any violating content" in the posts.
Facebook admits to scraping every Australian adult user's public photos and posts to train AI, with no opt-out option
ABC News
Jake Evans
Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent.
USA
Utah law restricting youth social media use blocked by judge
Reuters
Nate Raymond
A federal judge has blocked Utah from enforcing a new law aimed at protecting the mental health of young people by requiring social media platforms to verify users' ages and impose restrictions on minors' accounts.
US seizes over 350 websites used to import gun parts from China
Reuters
Nate Raymond
U.S. authorities said on Wednesday they had seized more than 350 websites selling gun silencers and parts from China used to covert semiautomatic pistols into fully automatic machine guns.
What the US biosecure act means for Chinese firms
Bloomberg
Chinese biotechnology firms are seeing the wildest swings in months as investors struggle to assess the impact of a US push to block the Asian nation from developing capabilities in fields ranging from health to technology.
North Asia
South Korea’s China-linked US$4 billion tech theft triggers outcry for tougher penalties
South China Morning Post
Park Chan-kyong
Calls are growing in South Korea for technology crimes to attract harsher penalties following the arrest of two former Samsung employees over a US$4 billion scheme to replicate a semiconductor plant in China using stolen trade secrets.
Rising tide of deepfake pornography targets K-pop stars
The Straits Times
Major K-pop agencies such as JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment and Cube Entertainment have declared war on deepfake visual content created using images of their K-pop artistes.
Southeast Asia
Chinese ‘Crimson Palace’ espionage campaign keeps hacking Southeast Asian governments
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
A high-stakes cat and mouse game between defenders and a sophisticated trio of Chinese cyberespionage groups has continued this year, with the hackers launching a string of attacks on government organisations in Southeast Asia despite attempts to disrupt their activity.
Despite Malaysia’s U-turn on web traffic rerouting, the ‘damage has already been done’
The Straits Times
Shannon Teoh
Although plans to prevent Malaysians from circumventing online restrictions to websites have been put on hold, concerns that this may be only a temporary respite have stoked fears of dampening investor sentiment and slowing the Anwar Ibrahim administration’s push to grow the digital economy.
New AI service to help lawyers go through 15,000 judgments in S’pore’s legal history
The Straits Times
Osmond Chia
Lawyers in the Republic can use a new artificial intelligence service to research and summarise walls of text from some 15,000 case judgments throughout Singapore’s judicial history since 1965.
South & Central Asia
Semicon India: Modi touts goal to become chipmaking powerhouse
Nikkei Asia
Aya Onishi & Ryosuke Hanada
India rolled out the red carpet for global chipmakers during Wednesday's opening of Semicon India, the semiconductor expo marking the country's full-fledged entry into the industry.
NZ & Pacific Islands
Australia sends expert teams to Fiji as Chinese state-backed hackers attack Pacific Islands Forum
ABC News
Stephen Dziedzic
The Australian government sent expert teams to Fiji this year to help the Pacific's top regional body after its networks were infiltrated by Chinese state-backed hackers, the ABC has learned. The cyber attack was "extensive" and the hackers intended to gather information about the operations of the Secretariat, according to sources.
Europe
Top EU privacy regulator opens probe into Google's AI compliance
Reuters
Google's lead EU privacy regulator opened an inquiry on Thursday into whether the search engine giant adequately protected European Union users' personal data before using it to help develop its foundational AI Model.
Popular French retailers confirm hackers stole customer data
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
Several well-known French retail brands reported having data stolen by a cyberattack late last week. The targets include Boulanger, which specializes in electronics and home appliances, and the retailer Cultura. Several French media outlets reported the list of victims could be even longer.
Fugitive Moldovan oligarchs exploit online weaknesses to spread disinformation before elections
Balkan Insight
Madalin Necsutu
Ahead of two important polls in October, Russian-linked oligarchs on the run from Moldovan justice have been paying to spread their anti-European propaganda online, to try to shape the outcome.
Pokémon is a Western intelligence tool, Belarus claims
Politico
Svetlana Shkolnikova
A Belarus Defense Ministry official has accused the once wildly popular mobile game Pokémon Go of being an instrument of Western intelligence. Alexander Ivanov, the ministry’s department head of ideological work, said the game was used to collect information about Belarusian aviation near Minsk, at its height of popularity nearly a decade ago.
UK
UK designates the data center sector part of its ‘Critical National Infrastructure’
The Record by Recorded Future
Alexander Martin
The British government announced on Thursday it had designated the data center sector as a part of the country’s critical national infrastructure meaning it would receive the same level of attention from officials as sectors including energy and water supplies.
Big Tech
Apple intelligence promises better AI privacy. Here’s how it actually works
WIRED
Lily Hay Newman
With the release of Apple’s iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia this month, the company is joining the fray, debuting Apple Intelligence, which the company says will ultimately be a foundational service in its ecosystem. But Apple has a reputation to uphold for prioritizing privacy and security, so the company took a big swing. It has developed extensive custom infrastructure and transparency features, known as Private Cloud Compute, for the cloud services Apple Intelligence uses when the system can't fulfill a query locally on a user's device.
Artificial Intelligence
Byte-sized diplomacy: The search for safe AI
The Interpreter
Miah Hammond-Errey
Artificial Intelligence is already here, diffused through the economy in different ways. So, Australia needs to accept a few conflicted realities. We also have an economy that will be left behind if we don’t enable Australian companies and entrepreneurs to create and adopt AI. We have people that need to be prepared with AI (and other) skills for future jobs and contributions to society.
Events & Podcasts
TSD Summit Sessions: Artificial intelligence and catastrophic risk with Connor Leahy
ASPI
In the first video edition of The Sydney Dialogue Summit Sessions, David Wroe sits down with Connor Leahy, co-founder and CEO of Conjecture AI. David and Connor speak about the catastrophic risks that a powerful but uncontrolled and unaligned artificial superintelligence could pose to humanity, and Conjecture’s approach to safe AI called “cognitive emulation”.
Jobs
ASPI Research Internship
ASPI
Have you recently completed your studies (undergraduate or postgraduate) and want to develop your expertise in defence, foreign and national security policy, including in areas such as strategic competition, defence, deterrence, foreign interference, technology, and security? Do you want to inform the public and government on the critical strategic choices facing Australia and learn what it takes to be a professional analyst? If so, apply for the ASPI Research Internship Program! Please note that this is a paid internship program. Applications will close at midnight Friday 27 September 2024.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.