Interpol shut down cybercrime forums | China-linked influence ops towards Spain | First international AI safety report published

Good morning. It's Friday 31st of January.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.

Follow us on X, on LinkedIn, and on BlueSky.

• An international operation has shut down two of the world's largest cybercrime forums — Cracked and Nulled — which had about 10 million users and earned millions of dollars in profits. The Record by Recorded Future

• A China-linked influence operation impersonated a human rights organization on social media to encourage Spaniards to overthrow their government in the wake of the deadly October floods in Valencia. POLITICO

• The first International AI Safety report covers a wide range of threats posed by the technology, including its impact on jobs and the environment, its potential to proliferate cyberattacks and deepfakes, and how it can amplify social biases. Computer Weekly

ASPI

DeepSeek challenges the supremacy of US tech companies in AI
The Strategist
Jenny Wong-Leung and Stephan Robin
DeepSeek’s release makes it clear that now is not the time for half-measures or wishful thinking. Bold decisions, strategic foresight and a willingness to lean in to the AI race is vital to maintaining a competitive edge, and not just by the US. ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker is clear in another regard: that we should be ready for similar advances by China in other technological domains. Let’s hope that DeepSeek really is the wakeup call needed and likeminded countries now take the action needed to avoid being shocked again—not just in AI, but in all critical technologies.

World

Police take down two large cybercrime forums, arrest suspects
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
An international operation has shut down two of the world's largest cybercrime forums — Cracked and Nulled — which had about 10 million users and earned millions of dollars in profits, authorities said on Thursday. Cybercriminals used the sites to trade illegal goods and services, such as stolen data, malware and hacking tools. The forums also offered scripts to automatically scan victims' systems for security vulnerabilities, making cyberattacks more effective.

Australia

In mineral sands, Australian rare earth ambitions mingle with China's interests
Nikkei Asia
Shaun Turton
The mineral-rich sands beneath the farmland of Victoria are capturing attention from Australian miners and politicians keen to turn the country into a bigger producer of critical minerals -- as well as from one of China's largest rare earth companies looking for supply. Victoria, once the center of Australia's 1850s gold rush, believes its heavy mineral sands deposits can kickstart a new mining boom. Traditionally mined for materials used in paints and ceramics, HMS are increasingly being promoted as a source of rare earths used to make powerful magnets for EVs, wind turbines and advanced weapons.

Australia’s CI-ISAC secures government grant; set to bolster cyber resilience in healthcare
Industrial Cyber
Anna Riberio
The CI-ISAC Australia has been awarded a $6.4 million grant from the Australian government to establish a dedicated information-sharing and analysis center for the nation’s healthcare sector. This initiative comes in response to recent cyber-attacks targeting Australian healthcare entities, such as health funds and hospitals, prompting the government to prioritize the health sector as the first to receive formal funding.

What DeepSeek’s rise could mean for Australian AI
Information Age
Tom Williams
The disruptive arrival of Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot DeepSeek presents new opportunities for Australian technology companies but may also attract concerns around privacy and national security, experts say. Asked about DeepSeek and the Australian government’s work on AI, Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic said while he thought Australians would “naturally gravitate” towards being cautious of DeepSeek as some have been of Chinese social media platform TikTok, he saw DeepSeek as “the latest chapter” in a race which Australia would “have to get accustomed to”.

China

Chinese State Media: Cyberattack on DeepSeek, including brute-force assault, started in US
South China Morning Post
William Zheng
A massive cyberattack targeting China’s AI start-up DeepSeek originated in the US, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. The cyberattack on DeepSeek started on January 3 and reached a peak on Monday and Tuesday with a massive brute-force attack from US IP addresses, Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account affiliated with CCTV.

Chinese algorithm boosts Nvidia GPU performance 800-fold in science computing
South China Morning Post
Zhang Tong
A high-performance algorithm that could solve complicated material design problems on consumer GPUs achieves a groundbreaking 800-fold increase in speed over traditional methods. Developed by a research team at Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, co-founded by Lomonosov Moscow State University and Beijing Institute of Technology, the new algorithm enhances the computational efficiency of peridynamics, a cutting edge, non-local theory that solves difficult physical issues such as cracks, damage and fractures. It opens up new possibilities for solving complex mechanical problems across various industries, including aerospace and military applications, on widely available chips that are low-cost and not subject to US sanctions.

China’s aerospace force reveals long-range radar in message to Xi Jinping
South China Morning Post
Hayley Wong
Rare close-up footage of China’s strategic long-range radar has been aired in a state television report on President Xi Jinping’s Lunar New Year message to the military. A ground-based phased-array radar station, with “early warning and monitoring” troops standing in front of it, was seen in an end-of-year video sent to Xi by the People’s Liberation Army. While details of the system were not disclosed, analysts said the advanced radar in the footage was a key part of Beijing’s efforts to improve its early warning capabilities against missile threats.

USA

‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley
The Guardian
Becca Lewis
An influential Silicon Valley publication runs a cover story lamenting the “pussification” of tech. A major tech CEO lambasts a Black civil rights leader’s calls for diversifying the tech workforce. Technologists rage against the “PC police”. No, this isn’t Silicon Valley in the age of Maga. It’s the tech industry of the 1990s, when observers first raised concerns about the rightwing bend of Silicon Valley and the potential for “technofascism”. Despite the industry’s (often undeserved) reputation for liberalism, its reactionary foundations were baked in almost from the beginning. As Silicon Valley enters a second Trump administration, the gendered roots of its original reactionary movement offer insight into today’s rightward turn.

With tampons and code, Silicon Valley workers quietly protest tech’s rightward shift
The New York Times
Mike Isaac, Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel
Quietly but unmistakably, the tampons, liners and pads reappeared in many of the men’s bathrooms at Meta’s offices. Days earlier, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, had made a series of changes at his company, aligning with President Trump’s new administration. As part of the moves, Mr. Zuckerberg eliminated diversity initiatives in the workplace — something that Mr. Trump had criticized — and removed sanitary products from the men’s bathrooms, which had been provided for transgender and nonbinary employees who may have required them.

The 'Contentification' of Trump policy
WIRED
Makena Kelly
Dr. Phil filming a ride-along with ICE agents, interviewing apparent migrants, and making it look like an episode of Cops feels like something I’d dream up after taking a little too much melatonin and scrolling TikTok before bed. But instead, the “contentification” of President Donald Trump’s policy is indeed the logical next step for a team that won the election with the help of influencers and content creators. Following suit, Trump’s cabinet has basically created the White House’s own cinematic universe.

How America fell in love with China's memes
BBC
Aidan Walker
The popularity of Chinese memes reveals how American users are expressing a fascination with China right at the moment when tensions between these two countries, especially in terms of technological dominance, have arguably never been higher. And it is providing the opportunity for some seemingly unlikely interactions that appear to defy the geopolitical narrative.

Americas

Mexico president to Google: Wrong to accept Trump's Gulf of Mexico name change
Reuters
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Google is wrong to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico on its Google Maps platform after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the body of water be renamed the "Gulf of America." Sheinbaum presented a letter addressed to Google in which her government argues the US cannot unilaterally change the name of a body of water which it shares with Cuba and Mexico. According to Mexico, the US cannot legally change the Gulf's name because the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea dictates that an individual country's sovereign territory only extends up to 12 nautical miles out from the coastline.

North Asia

Japan hit with record barrage of cyberattacks
Nikkei Asia
Akinobu Iwasawa
A type of cyberattack that overloads a network with data rose to an all-time high in Japan last month, industry data shows. Distributed denial-of-service attacks targeting Japanese businesses jumped about 60% in December compared with a year earlier. In particular, attacks against the financial industry were 4.1 times higher in December compared with a year earlier. The e-commerce sector sustained 2.3 times the year-earlier amount. DDoS attacks in the finance sector were especially concentrated on Dec. 30. The attacks eased by early January but have ticked up from the middle of the month.

Southeast Asia

China, Thailand pledge joint action on Myanmar cyber scam centres, human trafficking
South China Morning Post
Meredith Chen
China and Thailand have pledged to jointly crack down on dozens of cyber scam gangs in Myanmar and related human trafficking, including setting up at least one coordination centre, according to Thai media reports. This comes as a delegation from China’s Ministry of Public Security, led by assistant minister Liu Zhongyi, continues its visit to Thailand to seek ways to tackle the cross-border problem. Authorities in China had identified 36 major Chinese telecoms scam gangs operating in the Myawaddy region of southeastern Myanmar.

South & Central Asia

US teen shot dead by father in Pakistan over TikTok videos
BBC
Kelly Ng
A man who recently moved his family back to Pakistan from the US has confessed to killing his teenage daughter because he disapproved of her TikTok videos, police have told the BBC.

Ukraine - Russia

Ukrainian drone strike hits second Russian oil refinery in a week
BBC
Laura Gozzi
Ukraine says its forces successfully hit an oil refinery in the Russian town of Kstovo, around 800 kilometres from the front lines in eastern Ukraine. Four drones hit a Lukoil company depot, Ukrainian media said, adding that the facility suffered significant damage. Videos posted on social media showed large flames rising over an industrial facility.

If it weren’t for those meddling Europeans
EU vs Disinfo
As Russia’s war against Ukraine nears the three-year mark, peace is increasingly on everyone’s mind. The Kremlin’s information manipulators seek to do everything in their power to turn the peace narrative on its head and blame the EU and Ukraine for standing in the way of peace. In this week’s Disinfo Review, we dive into the current rendition of the Kremlin’s disinformation narratives about peace(opens in a new tab) supporting Moscow’s geopolitical aims in Ukraine and beyond.

Europe

China-linked influence operation tried to overthrow Spain’s government, report says
POLITICO
Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing
Fake accounts attempted to fan discontent as people raged against establishment figures following floods in the Valencia region that killed more than 200 people. Accounts associated with the Spamouflage operation, which is reportedly linked to China, posed as the Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders on social media platforms including Facebook, X, BlueSky and TikTok from November to January, according to the report, which was authored by American social network analysis firm Graphika.

Has Europe’s great hope for AI missed its moment?
Financial Times
Tim Bradshaw and Leila Abboud
True to the strong winds that inspired its name, French start-up Mistral AI took Davos by storm in 2024, having delivered a world-class AI model with a fraction of the usual resources. It was freshly valued at $2bn and had the backing of AI chip leader Nvidia and prominent venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. Mistral also had the enthusiastic support of French President Emmanuel Macron, who was drawn in by the start-up’s promise of “sovereign” and more “open” AI, proudly independent of US Big Tech. But a year is a long time in AI. Excitement about Mistral started to cool as it was seen to be struggling to keep up with its larger rivals in the AI race.

France, Germany, others urge EU Commission to protect elections in Europe from foreign interference
Reuters
France, Germany and 10 other European Union countries want the European Commission to use its powers under the Digital Services Act to protect the integrity of European elections from foreign interference, a letter signed by the 12 countries showed. In the letter, European affairs ministers from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Romania, Slovenia and Spain asked the commission to deliver on promises to create a dedicated EU body to counter foreign information manipulation and interference.

UK

DeepSeek Chinese AI app probed by UK security officials
POLITICO
Tom Bristow and Pieter Haeck
British officials are examining the national security implications of DeepSeek, whose AI model has caused panic in Silicon Valley and sparked fears China has stolen a march in the global tech race. The development has already sparked enquiries from data regulators in Italy, Ireland and Australia and drawn the attention of the US national security apparatus. Speaking to POLITICO, Britain’s Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “We scrutinize every innovation of the size and scale and impact of DeepSeek and we will make sure that it goes through the right system.

Satellites could end UK phone 'not spots', Vodafone says
BBC
Zoe Kleinman
Vodafone is adding satellite connectivity to its UK phone network by the end of the year, and across Europe in 2026. Satellite connectivity enables ordinary phones to operate as normal with full internet access when there is otherwise no coverage. However, experts say regulatory hurdles will need to be cleared and many more satellites launched for the service to take off. Many iPhones and Android devices already have emergency satellite connectivity, but it is currently text message based.

Big Tech

Meta to pay $25m to settle Trump lawsuit over ban
BBC
Peter Hoskins and Natalie Sherman
US President Donald Trump has signed a legal settlement that will see Facebook and Instagram owner Meta pay out roughly $25m. Trump sued the social media giant and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2021 over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots that year. In July 2024, Meta lifted the final restrictions on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the lead up to US presidential elections. Around $22m of the settlement will go to a fund for Trump's presidential library. The balance will be used to cover legal costs and the other plaintiffs who signed on to the lawsuit. Meta will not admit wrongdoing.

SoftBank in talks to invest up to $25bn into OpenAI
Financial Times
Arash Massoudi, David Keohane, George Hammond and Stephen Morris
SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $25bn into OpenAI, in a deal which would make it the ChatGPT maker’s biggest financial backer, as the pair partner on a massive new artificial intelligence infrastructure project. The two companies announced last week they would lead a joint venture that would spend $100bn to build Stargate — a sprawling data centre project touted by US President Donald Trump — with the figure rising to as much as $500bn over the next four years.

Artificial Intelligence

First international AI safety report published
Computer Weekly
Sebastian Klovig Skelton
A global cohort of nearly 1,000 artificial intelligence experts publish first international AI safety report ahead of the third AI summit, outlining an array of challenges posed by the technology that will be used to inform upcoming discussions

• International AI Safety Report 2025
  UK Government
  Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and AI Safety Institute
  The Report is the world’s first comprehensive synthesis of current literature of the risks and capabilities of advanced AI systems. Chaired by Turing-award winning computer scientist, Yoshua Bengio, it is the culmination of work by 100 AI experts to advance a shared international understanding of the risks of advanced AI. The report does not make policy recommendations. Instead it summarises the scientific evidence on the safety of general-purpose AI to help create a shared international understanding of risks from advanced AI and how they can be mitigated.

• What International AI Safety report says on jobs, climate, cyberwar and more
  The Guardian
  Dan Milmo
  The document, commissioned after the 2023 global AI safety summit, covers numerous threats from deepfakes to aiding cyberattacks and the use of biological weapons, as well as the impact on jobs and the environment. Wide-ranging investigation says impact on work likely to be profound, but opinion on risk of human extinction varies.

DeepSeek poses a challenge to Beijing as much as to Silicon Valley
The Economist
With the release of its latest AI model, DeepSeek, an obscure Chinese firm, has laid waste to several years of American policy meant to hold back Chinese innovation—and, in the process, blown a hole in the valuations of companies from Nvidia, America’s AI chip champion, to Siemens Energy, a manufacturer of electrical equipment used in data centres. In demonstrating its ability to innovate around American export restrictions, DeepSeek has raised doubts as to whether access to piles of cutting-edge semiconductors and related equipment is as important as previously thought when it comes to training AI models.

Why DeepSeek presents serious problems for China researchers
The Diplomat
Zi Yang
DeepSeek has exhibited failures in providing fact-based analysis of China. It frequently refuses to answer simple questions, distorts reality to favor the CCP, and avoids delivering unbiased information regarding China’s past and present. This is a worrying sign, especially for students and young researchers seeking knowledge on China, who might not possess the experience and expertise to counteract DeepSeek’s one-sided narratives. The chatbot has demonstrated its capacity to misinform and deceive.

US Copyright Office offers assurances on AI filmmaking tools
Variety
Gene Maddaus
The US Copyright Office declared Wednesday that the use of artificial intelligence tools to assist in the creative process does not undermine the copyright of a work. The announcement clears the way for continued adoption of AI in post-production, where it has become increasingly common, such as in the enhancement of Hungarian-language dialogue in “The Brutalist.” Studios, whose business model is founded on strong copyright protections, have expressed concern that AI tools could be inhibited by regulatory obstacles.

An AI-powered robot and gaming are helping scientists identify new deep-sea species
Bloomberg
Todd Woody
The game for phones and tablets — dubbed FathomVerse — populates a virtual ocean with images of marine critters in their deep-sea habitats stored in a sprawling database known as FathomNet. Some photos are of ocean animals whose identity has been verified by scientists. Others are organisms labeled by the AI or that have yet to be classified. On the backend, researchers verify the players’ consensus findings and compare them to the AI’s classifications.

Misc

How social media and influencers amplify health misinformation and dangerous rumours
South China Morning Post
Agence France-Presse
Falsehoods on podcasts, which experts warn are fuelling mistrust of conventional medicine, often go unchecked as fact-checkers must sift through hours of transcripts. Earlier this month, actor and director Mel Gibson said on The Joe Rogan Experience – the number two podcast on Spotify in the United States – that some of his friends had overcome stage four cancer after taking the antiparasitic drugs ivermectin and fenbendazole.

Bill Gates isn’t like those other tech billionaires
The New York Times
David Streitfeld
The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist is taking a break from the future to examine his past — and mulling where the billionaires now fit in. The older he gets, the more Bill Gates is surprised by what the world dishes up. Take billionaires. There are many now from the tech industry, quite a few with politics that skew forcefully right. “I always thought of Silicon Valley as being left of center,” Mr. Gates said. “The fact that now there is a significant right-of-center group is a surprise to me.”

Research

Visual assessment of Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour in disinformation campaigns
EU Disinfolab
Ana Romero-Vicente
The report examines three disinformation, manipulation, and interference campaigns: ‘Operation Overload’ by CheckFirst, ‘A massive Russian influence operation on TikTok’ by DFRLab and BBC Verify, and ‘QAnon’s ‘Save the Children’ campaign’ by multiple stakeholders. Through a structured visual approach, it assesses how these cases align with key indicators of Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour.

Events & Podcasts

Safeguarding Australian elections: Addressing AI-enabled disinformation
ASPI
As artificial intelligence advances, it creates new challenges for democracy and electoral integrity. AI-enabled disinformation, deepfakes, and influence operations are increasingly being weaponised to distort political discourse and erode public trust. This event on Thursday 6 February, 5:15-6:15pm, co-hosted by ASPI and CETaS, will focus on the intersection of AI, electoral integrity and democratic resilience.

Jobs

Professional Development Program Coordinator
ASPI
ASPI Program Coordinators are fundamental to the success of our professional development programs. As a key team member, you will be tasked with nurturing collaborative relationships across Defence, National Security, the National Intelligence Community, and the broader ASPI community. Success demands adept communication and interpersonal skills, a focus on client service, exceptional organisational abilities coupled with keen attention to detail, and the capability to think on your feet, problem-solve, and meet deadlines effectively.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.