Microsoft debates what to do with AI lab in China | US companies & Chinese experts engaged in secret diplomacy on AI safety | Australia: ONI casts wide net for tech leaders
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When Microsoft opened an advanced research lab in Beijing in 1998, it was a time of optimism about technology and China. But as tensions between the United States and China have mounted over which nation will lead the world’s technological future. The New York Times
Artificial intelligence companies OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere have engaged in secret diplomacy with Chinese AI experts, amid shared concern about how the powerful technology may spread misinformation and threaten social cohesion. Financial Times
Australia’s most senior intelligence agency, the Office of National Intelligence, has put the pedal to the metal on the tech and cyber recruitment front. It has put out a public call for both a Band 3 deputy director-general, digital and technology, and a Band 2 first assistant director-general, digital and data division. The Mandarin
ASPI
Indonesia needs a cyber ambassador, but that is not all
The Jakarta Post
Gatra Priyandita and Muhammad Habib
The third presidential debate focused largely on defense and foreign policy, but cybersecurity rightfully received some attention. At a time when cyberspace is becoming more vulnerable to online criminal gangs, cyber-mercenaries and state-sponsored cyber threats, the next Indonesian leadership must muster up the political will to ensure that the country’s cyber defense is sufficiently resourced.
Australia
Office of National Intelligence casts wide net for tech leaders
The Mandarin
Julian Bajkowski
Australia’s most senior intelligence agency, the Office of National Intelligence, has put the pedal to the metal on the tech and cyber recruitment front. It has put out a public call for both a Band 3 deputy director-general, digital and technology, and a Band 2 first assistant director-general, digital and data division. The two upper-level Senior Executive Service jobs hit the market as the assessments agency sets about substantially sharpening its tech chops with the position descriptions revealing the Band 3 DDG is charged with the oversight and delivery of a “transformation of ONI’s digital and data capability and will lead the drive to harness innovative technology solutions for the [national intelligence community]”.
The ASD’s 2023 Cyber Threat Report reveals key trends of cybercrime in Australia
Lexology
Grace Appleford, Cecelia Irvine-So and Penny Liberogiannis
On 14 November 2023, the Australian Signals Directorate published its 2022-2023 Annual Cyber Threat Report. This Report reveals key trends to understand in cybercrime facing Australian governments, business and individuals. This Report can help those in the education and for-purpose sectors to understand how the current state of cybercrime in Australia may affect their organisation.
China
Microsoft debates what to do with A.I. lab in China
The New York Times
Karen Weise, Cade Metz and David McCabe
Amid U.S.-China tensions, the company has faced questions over whether operating an advanced research lab in Beijing is politically tenable. Microsoft said it had instituted guardrails at the lab, restricting researchers from politically sensitive work. The company, which is based in Redmond, Wash., said it had also opened an outpost of the lab in Vancouver, British Columbia, and would move some researchers from China to the location.
USA
US SEC approves bitcoin ETFs in watershed for crypto market
Reuters
Hannah Lang and Suzanne McGee
The U.S. securities regulator on Wednesday approved the first U.S.-listed exchange traded funds to track bitcoin, in a watershed for the world's largest cryptocurrency and the broader crypto industry. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it approved 11 applications, including from BlackRock, Ark Investments/21Shares, Fidelity, Invesco and VanEck, despite warnings from some officials and investor advocates that the products carried risks.
Why a US bitcoin ETF is a game-changer for crypto
Reuters
Hannah Lang
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday approved exchange-traded funds that track the price of bitcoin in a game-changer for the cryptocurrency industry which has been trying for more than a decade to launch such a product. Multiple asset managers have applied for bitcoin ETFs since 2013, but the SEC rejected them on the grounds they would be vulnerable to market manipulation. In August, however, a court found the SEC was wrong to reject Grayscale Investments' bitcoin ETF application, forcing the agency to rethink its stance.
Only 4% of US states fully prepared for cyber-attacks targeting elections
Infosecurity Magazine
James Coker
Under 4% of US states are fully prepared to detect and recover from election-targeted cybersecurity incidents, according to research by Arctic Wolf. The survey of state and local government leaders across the US found that 14.3% of states were ‘not at all prepared’ to deal with such incidents, with 42.9% only ‘somewhat prepared’ ahead of the 2024 US election cycle, which includes Presidential and other state and local elections.
Cyberattacks are having fatal consequences, so the White House wants hospital funding tied to hospital security
TechRadar
Benedict Collins
The Biden administration is looking to introduce a policy that will require US hospitals to meet a certain level of digital security, including multi-factor authentication, in order to secure federal funding. A number of attacks in recent months have severely impacted hospitals, forcing ambulances to be diverted and non-urgent procedures to be rescheduled.
Americas
Visitors to Colombia urged to beware of dating apps as suspicious deaths surge
The Guardian
Luke Taylor
Foreign visitors to Colombia should take serious caution when using dating apps after a spate of suspicious deaths in the South American country, the US embassy in Bogotá has warned. In the last two months of 2023, eight US citizens died in the city of Medellín, in incidents involving drugging or suspected murder.
North Asia
South Korea’s 56 hours of paralysis is a cyber resilience cautionary tale
GovInsider
Luke Cavanaugh
Last November, South Korea’s digital government network suffered an outage of unprecedented scale, when a “glitch in the network” caused a service disruption in the Saeol Administrative System – a computer network exclusively for civil servants – that reverberated across the government for nearly two days. Later the same day, the Government24 portal – which provides citizens with information on thousands of government services – also broke down, followed a week later by an outage of one of the country’s mobile ID services.
South & Central Asia
Why hacking threats in India, other Asia Pacific countries is highest in 5 years
The Times of India
Concerns over cyber threats continue to grow and remain at the top of the list for causes of organisational disruption in India, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, a new report has said. It added that 57% of respondents in these countries have reported a cyberattack that prevented access to data within the past 12 months - the highest percentage in over 5 years.
Cyber-security management landscape of the Indian automation industry
Forbes India
Ranjan Pal, Bodhibrata Nag and Michael Siegel
India's industrial automation market is worth approximately $11 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 14 percent from 2022 to 2027 to $23 billion in 2027. Key players in this industry include manufacturers producing (closed-circuit) TVs, mobile electronics, air-conditioners, automotive and aviation vehicles, energy products (gas, diesel, petrochemicals), and healthcare solutions.
Europe
NoName cyberattacks escalate, targeting diverse sectors in Finland
The Cyber Express
Samiksha Jain
The NoName ransomware group, suspected to have Russian affiliations, has reportedly intensified its cyberattack on Finland. The recent wave of distributed denial-of-service attacks has targeted a wide array of critical sectors in Finland. The NoName cyberattacks have zeroed in on a variety of critical sectors encompassing the Energy Industry Association, which plays a pivotal role in overseeing the nation’s energy policies.
UK
Connected technology: CMS Committee publishes government response to report on AI and intellectual property
UK Parliament
The Culture, Media and Sport Committee publishes the Government response to its second report on connected tech, which highlighted concerns from across the creative industries about allowing the developers of AI to mine private intellectual property for profit without sharing with the original creators. The response confirms that the Government is no longer proceeding with its original proposal for a broad copyright exception for text and data mining.
Middle East
Israeli cyber frontlines: Inside the digital warfare of the war with Hamas
The Jerusalem Post
Nimrod Kozlovski
In recent years, the cyber arena has undergone a significant transformation. During the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, we’ve witnessed the trends in cyber attacks during wartime, their effects, and what attacked organizations need, and often lack to handle them. The era of vanity hacking and amateur cyber incursions is fading, giving way to more organized, sophisticated, and resource-intensive cyberattacks.
Democratising technology: Integrating equity and inclusion in an era of rapid innovation
Middle East Monitor
Dr Dena Al-Thani
While emerging technologies regularly present opportunities to tackle global challenges and improve the wellbeing of societies, they also have the potential to widen existing inequalities for already marginalised and underprivileged groups. As part of the efforts to offset inequality, the concept of equity seeks to attain parity in outcomes by ensuring a fair allocation of resources and opportunities, with a purposeful emphasis on providing assistance to historically disadvantaged communities.
Big Tech
Google lays off hundreds in Assistant, hardware, engineering teams
Reuters
Gursimrankaur Mehar and Jyoti Narayan
Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it is laying off hundreds of employees across multiple teams, with Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman also leaving the company, as the tech giant continues to cut costs. Google said it will lay off hundreds at its Voice Assistant unit, while a few hundred roles are being eliminated in the hardware team responsible for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit, with the majority of people in the augmented reality team being let go.
Artificial Intelligence
US companies and Chinese experts engaged in secret diplomacy on AI safety
Financial Times
Madhumita Murgia
Artificial intelligence companies OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere have engaged in secret diplomacy with Chinese AI experts, amid shared concern about how the powerful technology may spread misinformation and threaten social cohesion. According to multiple people with direct knowledge, two meetings took place in Geneva in July and October last year attended by scientists and policy experts from the North American AI groups, alongside representatives of Tsinghua University and other Chinese state-backed institutions.
Cyber inequity and AI top risks in 2024
ITWeb
Widening cyber inequity and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are key risks in 2024, according to the World Economic Forum Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2024 Report. The report, released this week, was developed in collaboration with Accenture and identifies cyber trends that business leaders will have to tackle in the year ahead. It was compiled using information from several surveys conducted between June and November 2023.
Misc
Customers of The Iconic at risk of being defrauded due to lack of payment verification measures
ABC News
Kate Ainsworth
On Tuesday, The Iconic confirmed it had seen an increase in customer accounts being accessed by unauthorised users, resulting in fraudulent orders being made and leaving some customers thousands of dollars out of pocket. The retailer said it had not suffered a data breach, but affected customers had been victims of a cyber attack known as "credential stuffing", where their email address and password used for their account with The Iconic matches accounts on other websites that have been accessed by hackers.
Cyber incidents hit 15% of global firms
The Express Tribune
Zafar Bhutta
It is alarming that critical infrastructure, oil and gas and energy organisations have suffered the biggest number of cyber incidents. According to a recent study conducted by Kaspersky, 15% of companies across the world encountered cyber incidents owing to the dearth of investment in that critical area over the last two years.
Jobs
Cyber, Technology & Security Program Coordinator
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
The Coordinator will coordinate CTS’s business processes, projects, stakeholder engagement and events schedule. The Coordinator will work closely with Director CTS, senior ASPI staff, other ASPI Programs and Corporate, Strategic Communications and Finance areas. The ideal candidate has 1-3 years’ experience in executive assistance, business coordination or events management roles.
AI Governance Fellow
Center for Democracy & Technology
The Center for Democracy & Technology is seeking a Fellow with research and/or applied technical expertise on issues relating to the governance of artificial intelligence. The Fellow will contribute to the work of CDT’s AI Governance Lab, focused on the responsible design, testing, monitoring and regulation of AI systems. The Fellow will contribute to original research, writing, and recommendations on questions that are core to current AI governance efforts in the U.S., EU, and globally.
Interim Director, School of Cybernetics
Australian National University
We are seeking a collegial leader and cultural champion who is invested in openly engaging all faculty and staff to continue the School’s journey since 2021 and to foster meaningful action in developing cybernetics and other areas of strategic focus identified in the School of Cybernetics Strategic Plan and College Strategic Intent.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.