Sweeping theft of US phone metadata by Chinese hackers | Beijing warns Chinese companies against using US Chips | The quest to unseat Nvidia
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A large number of Americans' metadata has been stolen in the sweeping cyberespionage campaign carried out by a Chinese hacking group dubbed "Salt Typhoon," a senior U.S. official told journalists on Wednesday. Call record metadata is sometimes described as the who, what, when, and where of phone calls. It doesn’t include the content of a call but can include who a call was placed to, how long it lasted, and where it was made from. Reuters
Chinese companies should be wary of buying U.S. chips as they are "no longer safe" and buy locally instead, four of the country's top industry associations said on Tuesday in a rare coordinated response to Washington's curbs on Chinese chipmakers. Reuters
In total, spending on computers without Nvidia chips by data center operators, which provide the computing power needed for A.I. tasks, is expected to grow 49 percent this year to $126 billion, according to Omdia, a market research firm. “The reality is, in my business, I don’t care what silicon is underneath,” he said. “What I care about is that I get the best price-performance and that I can get it to the end user.” The New York Times
Australia
Roblox is played by 90 million users daily but in the dark corners of chat rooms, danger lurks for young players
ABC News
Alysia Thomas-Sam
I think they need to be pulled up by the government. I would like the Australian eSafety Commissioner to pull Roblox in and say, 'You are a social media platform. You're not a game,' Ms Pendergast told 7.30.
More than innovation: Australia needs fast, low-cost defence production
The Strategist
David Goodrich
The reality is that at-scale manufacturing is 1000 times harder than innovation. The industrial redesign needs to be properly funded and become the end point of Australia’s sovereign manufacturing strategy. We have seen tremendous examples of Australian ingenuity, with several companies making great progress in developing cheap, responsive and high-rate defence capabilities for Australian and global markets.
Enhanced visibility and hardening guidance for communications infrastructure
Australian Signals Directorate
PRC-affiliated and other cyber actors are compromising major global telecommunications provider networks, focusing on provider edge and customer edge routers.
Redflow was the great hope of Australian manufacturing. Its collapse left customers with broken batteries
ABC News
James Purtill
Battery company Redflow was tipped to be the future of Australian clean energy manufacturing, but it collapsed in August this year. Some customers, installers and former employees say the company's $10,000 home batteries failed within months.
China
US chips are 'no longer safe,' Chinese industry bodies say in latest trade salvo
Reuters
Eduardo Baptista and Brenda Goh
Chinese companies should be wary of buying U.S. chips as they are "no longer safe" and buy locally instead, four of the country's top industry associations said on Tuesday in a rare coordinated response to Washington's curbs on Chinese chipmakers.
Tech wars: Why has China banned exports of rare minerals to US?
Al Jazeera
Shola Lawal
China has banned the export of rare but critical earth minerals used in the manufacture of important semiconductors to the United States in the latest move in an ongoing tech war between the two superpowers. Beijing’s announcement on Tuesday came just one day after the US ramped up restrictions on the export of advanced chips to China, which affects the country’s ability to develop advanced weapons systems and artificial intelligence.
Apple facing hurdles in adapting Baidu AI models for China, The Information reports
Reuters
Apple and Baidu are working to add AI features to iPhones sold in China, but are facing hurdles that could hurt the tech giant's phone sales in the country, The Information reported on Wednesday. The companies, which are adapting Baidu's large language models for iPhone users, are grappling with issues such as the LLMs' understanding of prompts and accuracy in responding to common scenarios, according to the report.
Political unrest in South Korea dominates Chinese social media Weibo and TikTok
ABC News
Bang Xiao
Five prominent hashtags, including "What happened in South Korea" and "President Yoon Suk Yeol", have collectively generated over a billion views, occupying the top five trending topics on Weibo. "Honestly, I can't think of a single South Korean president who didn't end up in jail," one user commented.
USA
Large number' of Americans' metadata stolen by Chinese hackers, senior official says
Reuters
Raphael Satter
A large number of Americans' metadata has been stolen in the sweeping cyberespionage campaign carried out by a Chinese hacking group dubbed "Salt Typhoon," a senior U.S. official told journalists on Wednesday. The official declined to provide specific figures but noted that China's access to America's telecommunications infrastructure was broad and that the hacking was still ongoing. Call record metadata is sometimes described as the who, what, when, and where of phone calls. It doesn’t include the content of a call but can include who a call was placed to, how long it lasted, and where it was made from.
Senators Warn the Pentagon: Get a Handle on China’s Telecom Hacking
WIRED
Lily Hay Newman
US intelligence and law enforcement agencies are scrambling to contain the fallout from a far-reaching Chinese espionage campaign into US telecoms. That includes the Department of Defense; in a letter to the DOD inspector general on Wednesday, senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Eric Schmitt of Missouri are calling on the Pentagon to investigate its own “failure to secure its unclassified telephone communications from foreign espionage.”
U.S. cranks up China chip industry curbs: 5 things to know
Nikkei Asia
Cheng Ting-Fang, Lauly Li and Kim Jaewon
The Biden administration on Monday launched its widest-ever controls on exports of U.S. technology to China and added 140 Chinese entities to its trade blacklist. The move not only targets Chinese semiconductor producers but all the supporting forces -- from chipmaking equipment and gases to design software -- needed to move the industry forward. It also takes aim at the chip manufacturing and supply network that has helped Chinese tech champion Huawei Technologies continue to access advanced chips.
Doublethink Lab and Voice of America: US election joint observation mission final report
DoubleThink Lab
Jasper Hewitt and Elena Yi-Ching Ho
On TikTok, we observed one pro-PRC account that impersonated a large US media outlet and made 50 posts directly related to the elections. The account’s content was similar to the content posted by Spamouflage on X. Several of the account’s videos went viral and reached authentic users.
Elon Musk’s $50 billion Tesla pay can’t be reinstated, Delaware judge rules
The New York Times
Peter Eavis and Jack Ewing
The judge, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery, struck down the award in January, ruling that shareholders had not been properly informed of its details and that members of Tesla’s board were not sufficiently independent.
North Asia
Japan tech companies scramble to comply with EU cybersecurity laws
Nikkei Asia
Atsushi Teraoka
Japanese tech companies like NEC and Mitsubishi Electric are struggling to keep up with cybersecurity regulations being enacted in the European Union, putting themselves at risk of being excluded from the market or hit with heavy fines. The EU's Cyber Resilience Act takes effect this month, designed to prevent products that fail to meet certain safety requirements from entering the European market.
The REAIM 2024 and the significance of AI in the military domain
Korea on Point
Young Joon Kim
AI is set to transform war strategies and battle tactics in the not-so-distant future. Enhanced decision-making, autonomous systems, cyber warfare, predictive analytics, and human-machine teaming are just a few areas where AI will have a significant impact. As militaries around the world continue to invest in AI technologies, it is essential to address the ethical and legal considerations associated with their use. By doing so, we can ensure that AI is harnessed responsibly to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of military operations while safeguarding human values and principles.
Ukraine-Russia
Russian-linked Turla caught using Pakistani APT infrastructure for espionage
CyberScoop
Greg Otto
A Russian cyber-espionage group with ties to the country’s Federal Security Service has been caught using networks associated with a Pakistani-based APT group. This operation marks the fourth recorded incident since 2019 where the Russian group, known commonly as Turla, has embedded themselves within another threat actor’s operations.
Europe
TikTok says it took down ‘cluster’ of pro-Russian influencers in Romania
Financial Times
Andy Bounds
The TikTok official added that 66,000 fake accounts and 10mn fake followers were removed ahead of the election. Earlier, it had removed an account with 299,000 followers linked to the far-right AUR party, said Caroline Greer, director of public policy at TikTok. The European Commission said it was too early to determine if TikTok had breached the EU’s Digital Services Act. It if had, it faces a fine of up to 6 per cent of global annual turnover. TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, had an annual turnover of $110bn in 2023.
UK
UK disrupts Russian money laundering networks used by ransomware
Bleeping Computer
Sergiu Gatlan
Dubbed "Operation Destabilise," this international investigation has led to the arrest of 84 Russian-speaking suspects linked to the Smart (led by Ukrainian George Rossi) and TGR (controlled by Russian Ekaterina Zhdanova) criminal organizations. "The networks also support Russian cyber criminals to launder their illicit profits. In 2021, Zhdanova laundered over $2.3million of suspected ransoms paid in crypto by victims to the Ryuk ransomware group," the NCA said today.
Middle East
China’s ties with Saudi Arabia buoyed by green tech
Financial Times
Edward White, Cheng Leng, Ahmed Al Omran and Alex Irwin-Hunt
China has also become the kingdom’s largest source of greenfield foreign direct investment, with investments from 2021 to October this year totalling $21.6bn, about a third of which were in clean technologies such as batteries, solar and wind, according to investments tracked by fDi Markets. This compares with $12.5bn from the US, the next highest. The figures herald a change, with China eclipsing the kingdom’s traditional investment partners, the US and France. Many of the Chinese deals have yet to show up in official Saudi figures, indicating the capital has yet to be deployed.
Qatar to invest $1.3 billion in climate technology in Britain
Reuters
Catarina Demony
Qatar will invest 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in climate technology in the United Kingdom, with engineering company Rolls-Royce set to benefit from some of the cash to support its energy transition, the British government said on Wednesday. The announcement was made during a two-day state visit to Britain by Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who is expected to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday.
Big Tech
The furious contest to unseat Nvidia as king of A.I. chips
The New York Times
Don Clark
In total, spending on computers without Nvidia chips by data center operators, which provide the computing power needed for A.I. tasks, is expected to grow 49 percent this year to $126 billion, according to Omdia, a market research firm. “The reality is, in my business, I don’t care what silicon is underneath,” he said. “What I care about is that I get the best price-performance and that I can get it to the end user.”
Artificial Intelligence
Misinformation researcher admits ChatGPT added fake details to his court filing
The Verge
Gaby Del Valle
A misinformation expert accused of using AI to generate a legal document admitted he used ChatGPT to help him organize his citations, leading to “hallucinations” that critics said called the entire filing into question. Jeff Hancock, the founder of the Stanford Social Media Lab who wrote the document, says the errors don’t change the “substantive points in the declaration.”
Oxford University to lead AI security research through new national laboratory partnership
Oxford University
The University of Oxford, in collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute and UK Government, will play a lead role in the newly announced Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR). The £8.22 million government-funded initiative marks a significant step forward in strengthening Britain's cyber resilience.
Misc
What we learned from reporting on global tech this year
Rest of World
Rest of World contributors from Dhaka to Buenos Aires share their highlights, low points, and key takeaways from covering technology in 2024.
Research
Thorn and WeProtect Global Alliance Release Report on New and Emerging Technologies Impacting Online Child Safety
AP - PR Newswire
Thorn, a nonprofit that builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse, and WeProtect Global Alliance, a global movement of 310 organizations transforming the response to child sexual abuse and exploitation online, today released a new report, “Evolving Technologies Horizon Scan: A review of technologies carrying notable risk and opportunity in the fight against online child sexual exploitation.”
Events & Podcasts
Air force for hire
The Atlantic Council's Guns for Hire
Alessandro Arduino
Alia Brahimi chats with mercenaries expert Alessandro Arduino, who is also a top China analyst. They discuss recent seismic leaps in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology and how the cost of drone defense is a magnitude greater than drone offense.
Jobs
ASPI Director – Defence Strategy Program
ASPI
ASPI is recruiting for one of its key leadership positions - the Director of its Defence Strategy Program. This is an exceptional opportunity for a talented senior leader to contribute to the work of one of the Indo-Pacific’s top think-tanks with a focus on military strategy and capability, emerging security issues and our region. The incoming Director of Defence Strategy is expected to have strong knowledge in at least some of the issues covered by the team, in addition to superior management (including project and stakeholder management) skills, a proven ability to build senior and global relationships and the capacity to fundraise to support the team’s work.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.