Trump victory means uncertainty for tech companies | FBI warns Russia-backed disinformation aimed to disrupt US elections | Google reveals Ukrainian military sites in maps update

Good morning. It's Thursday 7th of November.

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.

• Mr. Trump’s first term was wild and unpredictable, creating a noisy day-to-day business environment that even the biggest tech companies struggled to navigate. It’s likely that more chaos and uncertainty lie ahead. The New York Times

• Americans went to the polls on Tuesday against a backdrop of misinformation – much of it suspected to have originated in Russia – as the FBI warned of fake videos and non-credible threats of terrorism aimed at disrupting the US presidential election and discouraging voting.  The Guardian

• Google revealed the location of Ukrainian military sites in its latest Maps update, with the tech giant scrambling to remove the pictures, a Kyiv official said Sunday. Moscow has already started “actively distributing” the sensitive images. POLITICO

ASPI

Satcom future in doubt, industry left adrift as Defence cancels project
The Strategist
Malcolm Davis
Secure satellite communication is a key requirement for ADF ability to undertake joint and integrated operations in a multi-domain operational environment. Known as satcom, it forms the informational backplane and foundation of modern warfare. Without this critical space support, military forces in the air, sea and land domains are deaf, dumb and blind. They cannot fight.

Australia

Australia scrapped satellite because new tech could 'shoot it out of sky'
iTnews
Kirsty Needham
Australia's Department of Defence cancelled a multi-billion-dollar Geostationary Earth Orbit satellite project with Lockheed Martin that was to deliver Australia's first sovereign-controlled satellite communication system over the Indo-Pacific Ocean regions. Defence Minister Richard Marles said the government had abandoned the plan to have two or three geosynchronous satellites above Australia to deliver defence communications because the system designed eight years ago was out of date.

A university ‘spin-in’ to drive the semiconductor sector
InnovationAus
James Riley
Macquarie University has ratcheted-up ambitions for commercialising technology in the semiconductor industry, launching an on-campus Silicon Platforms Lab in collaboration with local startup Atto Devices. The structure of the collaboration is effectively a mirror opposite of a university ‘spin-out’. It is instead a university ‘spin-in’, where industry startup Atto Devices has been brought into the university, and will co-locate at the SiP Lab to serve as the primary commercialisation pathway for the labs research.

Canadian quantum firm links up with Macquarie Uni
InnovationAus
Justin Hendry
Canadian quantum computing outfit BTQ Technologies has partnered with Macquarie University on advanced quantum algorithms and secure communications research. The strategic partnership, announced on Tuesday, will look to integrate quantum processing into communications protocols to improve speed, security and energy efficiency, the NEO Exchange-listed company said.

China

China will work with US, government says, but more rivalry expected under Trump
Reuters
Laurie Chen
China will work with the U.S. on the basis of mutual respect, it said on Wednesday as Donald Trump closed in on victory in the presidential election, but strategists said Beijing was bracing for bitter superpower rivalry over trade, technology and security issues.

Chinese hackers gained access to huge trove of Americans’ cell records
POLITICO
John Sakellariadis
Chinese hackers accessed sensitive cellular logs on a vast number of Americans after penetrating inside a swathe of U.S. telecommunications providers earlier this year, according to two people involved in the response to the hacks. The two people said a China-backed hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon gained access to a vast trove of so-called Call Detail Records. Those contain information on who Americans talk to, how often, and when, as well as detailed location data afforded by 5G networking services.

USA

What a Trump victory means for tech
The New York Times
Kevin Roose
But whether they voted for Mr. Trump or not, nearly everyone in tech will feel the consequences of a second Trump term, from social media companies to crypto investors to the companies trying to build next-generation artificial intelligence systems. Mr. Trump’s first term was wild and unpredictable, creating a noisy day-to-day business environment that even the biggest tech companies struggled to navigate. It’s likely that more chaos and uncertainty lie ahead.

• How Trump’s election could affect the startup-friendly Inflation Reduction Act
  TechCrunch
  Tim De Chant
  President-elect Donald Trump spent plenty of time on the campaign trail railing against key portions of the Inflation Reduction Act, from solar and wind tax credits to electric vehicles and environmental justice initiatives. But his return to the presidency doesn’t necessarily spell the end of the landmark legislation. While Trump’s administration is unlikely to be supportive of certain climate tech startups, it will have a harder time ending the broadly popular law. Startups have broadly benefited from the Inflation Reduction Act. Tax credits have encouraged investors to plow money into nuclear power, hydrogen, and all things EV-related.

• Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Tim Cook and other tech leaders congratulate Trump on election win
  CNBC
  Annie Palmer
  Leaders of major technology companies congratulated President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance on their victory in the U.S. presidential election Wednesday. The messages were similar, with CEOs remarking that they wish Trump success when he returns to the Oval Office and look forward to working with his administration. Amazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos celebrated Trump’s win in a post on X, calling it an “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”

Trump expected to shift course on antitrust, stop Google breakup
Reuters
Jody Godoy
Donald Trump will likely dial back some of the antitrust policies pursued under the administration of President Joe Biden, potentially including a bid to break up Alphabet's Google over its dominance in online search, experts said. Trump is expected to continue cases against Big Tech, several of which began in his first term, but his recent skepticism about a potential Google breakup highlights the power he will hold over how those cases are run.

Trump- and Musk-fueled falsehoods and threats backdrop US election
The Guardian
Robert Tait
Americans went to the polls on Tuesday against a backdrop of misinformation – much of it suspected to have originated in Russia – as the FBI warned of fake videos and non-credible threats of terrorism aimed at disrupting the US presidential election and discouraging voting. These tensions were stoked by Donald Trump supporters and the former US president himself. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s most vocal surrogate, tweeted a video of support that appeared to reference the far-right QAnon ideology.

US official sees little voting disruption tied to foreign interference
Reuters
A senior U.S. cyber official on Tuesday said her agency had not seen any major incidents reflecting foreign interference in Tuesday's presidential election despite a steady stream of disinformation aimed at disrupting the vote throughout Election Day. As of early evening, there was little evidence of significant disruption to election infrastructure, Cait Conley, a senior official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters.

How Musk's clout with Trump could enrich his companies
Reuters
Marisa Taylor, Rachael Levy and Chris Kirkham
Elon Musk’s backing of Donald Trump’s decisive victory for a second presidency puts the billionaire entrepreneur in an extraordinary position of influence to help his companies secure favorable government treatment. Musk contributed at least $119 million to a pro-Trump spending group, federal records show, part of a wider strategy to insulate his companies from regulation or enforcement and boost their government support, according to Reuters interviews with six Musk-company sources familiar with his political and business dealings and two government officials who have extensive interactions with Musk firms. Musk has business interests that depend heavily on government regulation, subsidies or policy, from Tesla’s electric cars to Neuralink’s brain chips to SpaceX’s rockets.

US needs to crack down on Chinese chipmaker SMIC, Republican lawmaker says
Reuters
Karen Freifeld
A top Republican lawmaker has accused the Biden administration of not doing enough to prevent China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp from strengthening the country's chipmaking industry and military-industrial complex. Michael McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged U.S. Commerce Department agents to visit SMIC's facilities and check whether the company is illegally producing chips for Huawei, the sanctioned telecommunications company seen as a national champion within China's chip industry.

Washington courts' systems offline following weekend cyberattack
Bleeping Computer
Sergiu Gatlan
​​Court systems across Washington state have been down since Sunday when officials said "unauthorized activity" was detected on their networks. This ongoing data system outage affects all state courts' judicial information systems, websites, and associated services

North Asia

South Korean facilities attacked by Russian hackers over plan to track North’s troops
South China Morning Post
A Russian hacking group has launched cyberattacks on South Korea’s critical infrastructure in apparent retaliation for Seoul’s proposal to send military officials to Ukraine to track North Korean troops involved in Moscow’s war effort. Z Pentest claimed it gained access to equipment at a warehouse that stored Ukrainian grains in the city of Naju in South Jeolla province. The gang shared a video on social media supposedly showing how it breached the granary’s electronic controls for loading grain elevators, saying they “were loaded for a very long time, and then just poured tonnes of grain onto the ground”.

Japan space agency hacking reveals cyber espionage risk
Nikkei Asia
Tatsuya Sudo
A cyberattack against Japan's space agency is an example of the growing threat of cyber espionage targeting executives with access to critical data, a tactic that analysts says is commonly used by Chinese hacker groups. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has been hit by multiple cyberattacks in which staff accounts were hacked through the Microsoft 365 cloud service. The incident were announced in July.

Japan taps U.S. chip startup Tenstorrent to help train new wave of engineers
Japan Times
Stephen Nellis
Tenstorrent, a Silicon Valley artificial intelligence chip startup founded by Apple and Intel veterans, said it had won a deal with the Japanese government to help train up to 200 Japanese chip designers at its U.S. offices over five years. The contract announced on Tuesday, under which $50 million will be divvied up among Tenstorrent and Japan's Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center, is part of Japan's effort to reinvigorate its semiconductor industry.

Southeast Asia

Singapore and UK sign AI safety agreement
The Straits Times
Mike Yeo
Artificial intelligence development will get a boost with the signing of a new memorandum of cooperation between Singapore and Britain to enhance the safety and reliability of AI technology in its development and use. Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo signed the agreement with British Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle in London on Nov 6. The agreement will strengthen cooperation between the AI safety institutes of both countries in areas such as research, information sharing and comprehensive AI testing.

South & Central Asia

Training to tackle digital threats starts at DIAT
Times of India
Sandip Dighe
A specialised training for 30 cyber commandos from the ministry of home affairs to counter all possible cyber threats has commenced on Tuesday at the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, a deemed university of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, near Pune. The training programme, with a syllabus finalised by the home ministry and DIAT, is a part of the ministry's initiative to bolster cyber defence capabilities across the country.

Ukraine-Russia

Ukraine slams Google for revealing location of military sites
POLITICO
Seb Starcevic
Google revealed the location of Ukrainian military sites in its latest Maps update, with the tech giant scrambling to remove the pictures, a Kyiv official said Sunday. Moscow has already started “actively distributing” the sensitive images, Andriy Kovalenko, head of the disinformation-countering branch of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said in a post on Telegram. “Imagine the situation. Google displays updated images on the maps showing the location of our military systems,” Kovalenko said. “What is wrong with this world?”

Europe

Interpol operation nets 41 arrests, takedown of 22,000 malicious IPs
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
Interpol announced 41 arrests and the seizure of hundreds of servers in an operation intended to take down malicious IP addresses used for phishing, ransomware and infostealer malware. On Tuesday, the intergovernmental organization said it worked with law enforcement agencies from 95 member countries and multiple cybersecurity firms on the second phase of Operation Synergia, which was announced earlier this year.

Middle East

Saudis plan $100 billion AI powerhouse to rival UAE’s tech hub
Bloomberg
Marissa Newman, Mark Bergen, Julia Love, and Christine Burke
Saudi Arabia is planning a new artificial intelligence project with backing of as much as $100 billion as it seeks to develop a technological hub to rival the neighboring United Arab Emirates, people familiar with the matter said. The state-backed entity will invest in data centers, startups and other infrastructure to develop artificial intelligence.

Iranian APT group targets IP cameras, extends attacks beyond Israel
Dark Reading
Robert Lemos
An Iranian cyber-operations group, Emennet Pasargad — also known as Cotton Sandstorm — has broadened its attacks, expanding its targets beyond Israel and the United States and targeting new IT assets, such as IP cameras. In an advisory published last week, the US departments of Justice and Treasury — along with the Israel National Cyber Directorate — called out the change in tactics and noted that the group had provided resources and infrastructure services to Middle Eastern threat groups by operating as a legitimate company, Aria Sepehr Ayandehsazan.

Africa

Mozambique VPN usage soars as internet restrictions continue
TechRadar
Chiara Castro
People in Mozambique are increasingly resorting to VPN services to bypass ongoing online restrictions in the wake of deadly protests contesting the election results. Authorities first disrupted mobile internet connections on October 25, as protests erupted across the country the day before. WhatsApp, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram all went dark a few days after that, on October 31, making using a VPN necessary to keep using these platforms. Proton VPN confirmed a 127,830% spike during the day to TechRadar.

Big Tech

Huawei’s new made-in-China software takes on Apple and Android
The Economist
When Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, releases its latest smartphone this month, techies will strip it down to figure out how it works. The semiconductors powering the Mate 70, as the device is called, will reveal how much progress China has made in building its own chips and breaking its reliance on foreign technology. But the software in the phone may prove more important than the hardware. Huawei is expected to install HarmonyOS NEXT, its new homemade operating system, on the devices. This would be China’s first clean break with the Western-backed systems on which it and the rest of the world rely.

Trump win casts cloud over TSMC and Samsung U.S. chip plans
Nikkei Asia
Yifan Yu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and South Korea's Samsung are facing an uncertain future in the U.S. as the two Asian chip giants wait to see whether the next administration under Donald Trump will continue to support their massive expansion plans. The president-elect has criticised the bipartisan CHIPS Act, legislation enacted in August 2022 under President Joe Biden that provides billions of dollars in support for bringing semiconductor manufacturing onto American soil.

Apple set to face fine under EU's landmark Digital Markets Act, sources say
Reuters
Foo Yun Chee
Apple is set to be fined by the European Union's antitrust regulators under the bloc's landmark rules aimed at reining in the power of Big Tech, making it the first company to be sanctioned, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday. The regulators charged in June that the iPhone maker had breached the bloc's tech rules. The charge against Apple was the first by the Commission under its Digital Markets Act.

Huawei counts on influential friends to remain European 5G force
Light Reading
Iain Morris
Jacek Tomczak is just the latest European politician accused of being in Huawei's pocket. The Polish deputy minister for development resigned his post last week as various charges of wrongdoing swirled around him. Among them is a report he lobbied enthusiastically on behalf of Huawei, the Chinese network equipment and smartphone maker that has been subject to US sanctions and European resistance for several years.

Artificial Intelligence

The other election night winner: Perplexity
TechCrunch
Maxwell Zeff
Elon Musk’s Grok failed almost instantly, offering wrong answers about races’ outcomes before the polls had even closed. On the other hand, Perplexity offered helpful, real-time election insights and maps throughout the night, linking to reliable resources and offering historical context where appropriate. Late last week, the startup announced the launch of its election information hub, featuring real-time maps populated with voting data from Democracy Works and the Associated Press, the same information sources that power Google’s election map. This approach was different from most other AI chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, which simply refused to answer questions related to the election.

Events

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