Trump weakens US cyberdefenses at moment of rising danger | Chinese hackers actively exploiting an Ivanti Connect Secure vulnerability | Australian super funds hit by cyber attacks, with money stolen
Australia: Chinese celebrities ‘voluntarily’ provided character references in 2019 WeChat videos, Liberal candidate says
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The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.
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When President Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday, it was the latest in a series of moves that have torn away at the country’s cyberdefenses just as they are confronting the most sophisticated and sustained attacks in the nation’s history. The commander, General Timothy D. Haugh, had sat atop the enormous infrastructure of American cyberdefenses until his removal. New York Times
Just a day after software firm Ivanti disclosed a critical vulnerability in several of its gateway products, the Mandiant Incident Response team has revealed that hackers – most likely with links to China – have been exploiting the bug to deploy two newly discovered forms of malware. cyberdaily.au
A number of Australian superannuation funds have been hit with suspected cyber attacks, with members of one fund losing $500,000 between them in retirement savings. Stressed fund members have told ABC News they cannot access their accounts, adding to the anxiety. ABC News
Australia
Australian superannuation funds hit by cyber attacks, with members' money stolen
ABC News
Emilia Terzon, Tony Ibrahim and Maddy Morwood
A number of Australian superannuation funds have been hit with suspected cyber attacks, with members of one fund losing $500,000 between them in retirement savings. Stressed fund members have told ABC News they can't access their accounts, adding to the anxiety. AustralianSuper has been hit with 600 attempted cyber attacks in the past month, ABC News understands, with four members losing half a million dollars combined.
At least half a million stolen in super funds cyber hack
The Australian
Angelica Snowden, Cliona O'Dowd and Ben Packham
Cyber criminals have carried out a co-ordinated hit on some of the country’s biggest super funds including Australian Super, Australian Retirement Trust, Hostplus and Rest, and thousands of members are understood to be affected.Australian super funds targeted by criminals in new cyberattack
9News
Josh Hohne and Yashee SharmaSeveral of Australia's largest super funds including AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust, and Rest, have been hit by a cyberattack, with stolen passwords used to target members' accounts.
Chinese celebrities ‘voluntarily’ provided character references in 2019 WeChat videos, Liberal candidate says
The Guardian
Henry Belot and Wing Kuang
A Liberal candidate for an ultra-marginal seat in Sydney says famous Chinese actors based in Beijing voluntarily provided glowing character references describing him as a “young talent” and were not paid to do so. Guardian Australia has confirmed the actors approached by Scott Yung’s campaign separately charge several thousands of dollars for similar short video endorsements and personalised messages.
China
Alert! Chinese hackers are actively exploiting an Ivanti Connect Secure vulnerability
CyberDaily
David Hollingworth
Just a day after software firm Ivanti disclosed a critical vulnerability in several of its gateway products, the Mandiant Incident Response team has revealed that hackers – most likely with links to China – have been exploiting the bug to deploy two newly discovered forms of malware. Ivanti disclosed CVE-2025-22457 on 3 April, explaining that a stack-based buffer overflow in Ivanti Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateways could lead to remote code execution.
Remote access backdoor discovered in Chinese robot dog Unitree Go1
CyberInsider
Bill Mann
Security researchers have uncovered a pre-installed, undocumented remote access tunnel in Unitree Go1 robot dogs, enabling full remote control and potential lateral network access. The discovery raises serious concerns about supply chain trust, especially as these robots are widely used in academic, corporate, and even defense-related environments.
USA
Trump weakens U.S. cyberdefenses at a moment of rising danger
The New York Times
David E. Sanger and Nick Corasaniti
When President Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday, it was the latest in a series of moves that have torn away at the country’s cyberdefenses just as they are confronting the most sophisticated and sustained attacks in the nation’s history. The commander, General Timothy D. Haugh, had sat atop the enormous infrastructure of American cyberdefenses until his removal, apparently under pressure from the far-right Trump loyalist Laura Loomer.
Trump fires NSA director in national security purge, sources say
Reuters
Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco and Patricia Zengerle
U.S. President Donald Trump fired General Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency, in a national security purge that sources said on Friday included more than a dozen staff at the White House national security council. NSA director Air Force General Haugh, who is also head of U.S. Cyber Command, was dismissed along with Wendy Noble, his deputy at the NSA, two sources familiar with the decision said.
US, Australia, Canada warn of ‘fast flux’ scheme used by ransomware gangs
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
Ransomware gangs and Russian government hackers are increasingly turning to an old tactic called “fast flux” to hide the location of infrastructure used in cyberattacks. Cybercriminals and nation-state actors use the fast flux technique to rapidly change the Domain Name System records associated with a single domain name — hiding the locations of malicious servers, according to an advisory published on Thursday by cybersecurity agencies in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
CISA, FBI warn of fast flux technique used to hide malicious servers
Cybersecurity Drive
David Jones
The FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a group of international partners on Thursday warned that cyber threat groups are using a technique called “fast flux” to hide the locations of malicious servers, posing a significant threat to national security.
Trump extends deadline to keep TikTok running in US
BBC
Jessica Murphy
US President Donald Trump has granted TikTok a second 75-day extension to comply with a law that requires the hugely popular video app to either sell its US operation or face a ban in the country. "We do not want TikTok to 'go dark'," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal." The platform is currently owned by Chinese company ByteDance.
Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s
The Verge
Dominic Preston
When President Donald Trump began yesterday’s announcement of the White House’s latest trade policy brandishing a novelty-sized cardboard sign labeled “Reciprocal Tariffs,” the immediate and nearly unanimous response was bafflement. Trump slapped a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports into the US, including from uninhabited islands, plus absurdly high rates on specific countries, supposedly based on “tariffs charged to the USA” — which didn’t match up to other, non-cardboard-sign-based estimates. Where did these numbers come from?
Southeast Asia
Philippines: State-sponsored online harassment has “chilling effect” on young human rights defenders
Amnesty
Amnesty International’s first ever youth-led report reveals that online harassment by the Philippine authorities, including the practice of “red-tagging” or labelling individuals as communists, creates a climate of fear that is deterring young human rights defenders from engaging in activism and expressing themselves freely. In the report, “Left to their own devices: The chilling effects of online harassment among young human rights defenders in the Philippines,” young activists aged 18 to 24 shared experiences of being red-tagged, doxed with personal information published online without their consent, and trolled.
Ukraine - Russia
Hackers hit Ukrainian state agencies, critical infrastructure with new ‘Wrecksteel’ malware
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
Ukraine recorded at least three cyberattacks in March targeting government agencies and critical infrastructure with new spying malware. The attacks were carried out using previously unknown malware — dubbed Wrecksteel — deployed through phishing emails, according to a report released on Thursday by Ukraine’s computer emergency response team.
Europe
Huawei, Forum Europe staff face Belgian court hearings over corruption charges
POLITICO
Elisa Braun, Antoaneta Roussi and Mathieu Pollet
Three Huawei employees and a managing director from Brussels conference organizer Forum Europe were represented in court this week for hearings related to the corruption investigation into the Chinese tech giant's lobbying in Europe. Police raided more than 20 locations in Belgium and Portugal last month within an investigation into alleged illegal payments made by Huawei to secure an open letter signed by eight European lawmakers in support of the company’s interests, according to the Belgian prosecutor and an arrest warrant seen by POLITICO.
Pope’s April prayer intention: Technology should benefit everyone
Vatican News
Kielce Gussie
In the month of April, Pope Francis dedicates his prayer intention to new technologies and the hope that their use “will not replace human relationships, will respect the dignity of the person, and will help us face the crises of our times.” In a world flooded with social media trends and the ever-growing field of artificial intelligence, Pope Francis stresses that “technology is the fruit of the intelligence God gave us.” However, he warns against misusing it – as that can have negative consequences.
UK
‘I didn’t start out wanting to see kids’: are porn algorithms feeding a generation of paedophiles – or creating one?
The Guardian
Harriet Grant
In England and Wales, 850 men a month are arrested for online child abuse offences. They come from every walk of life: teachers, police officers, bus drivers, doctors. Those on the frontline are warning of another alarming trend: a significant shift towards younger offenders among those picked up for watching illegal material. The arrests are just one metric pointing towards a spiralling global crisis. Last year was the worst on record for instances of online child sexual abuse imagery, with the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation acting to remove content from 300,000 web pages, each containing at least one, if not hundreds or thousands, of illegal images and videos.
Africa
South Africa’s civil servants are missing skills, especially when it comes to technology – report
The Conversation
Mashupye Herbert Maserumule et al.
South Africa’s goal since 2012 has been to build a capable and developmental state to address the twin challenges of poverty and inequality. The country’s National Development Plan defines a capable state as “well-run and effectively coordinated state institutions with skilled public servants”. A transformative and developmental role is about “consistently delivering high quality services” for the good of society. To meet these goals, the country requires people in government with the necessary technological skills.
Artificial Intelligence
China and America are racing to develop the best AI. But who is ahead in using it?
The Economist
Who is better at the technology of the future: America or China? Speculation is at fever pitch. The world’s most famous artificial-intelligence company, OpenAI, is American. Models produced by DeepSeek, a Chinese competitor, are almost as good—and cheaper.
Stranger than fiction: The uphill battle against misinformation
Silicon Republic
Jenny Darmody
Earlier this week, a fake AI-generated video of an earthquake went viral, gaining millions of views in the wake of the devastating Myanmar earthquake that killed thousands of people. Last week, a top vaccine regulator in the US Food and Drug Administration resigned, citing what he called Robert F Kennedy Jr’s efforts to spread misinformation about the safety of immunisations. And last year, amid the chaos that was the US presidential election, Elon Musk shared a fake campaign video for Kamala Harris on X in violation of the platform’s rules – a platform he owns.
This 21-year-old used AI to cheat a test. He got multiple job offers
The Australian Financial Review
Parmy Olson
A Columbia University student recently shone a light on a disturbing corner of the job market. Roy Lee, 21, was fed up with the antiquated way that large tech firms were testing job candidates using computer coding riddles you had to memorise, so he created a tool that his peers could use to beat the system. A translucent window shows the latest version of ChatGPT, which the applicant can use to copy and paste code during a test over Zoom. The recruiter can’t see any of this when screen sharing.
AI’s $4.8 trillion future: UN warns of widening digital divide without urgent action
UN News
The Technology and Innovation Report 2025, released on Thursday by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, sounds the alarm on growing inequality in the AI landscape and lays out a roadmap for countries to harness AI’s potential. The report shows that just 100 companies, mostly in the United States and China, are behind 40 per cent of the world’s private investment in research and development, highlighting a sharp concentration of power.
Most workers are greatly overestimating their AI skills
TechRadar
Craig Hale
Nine in 10 (91%) UK tech workers claim to be AI-savvy, yet three-quarters (77%) admit to pretending they know more about AI than they actually do, new research has claimed. The findings from Pluralsight come at a critical point for many organizations, with 86% of UK businesses either using or planning to use AI and 93% fast-tracking AI initiatives in the past six months. However, popular misconceptions around the tech continue to plague businesses, preventing the effective deployment and utilization of AI.
Misc
To fight disinformation, treat it as an insurgency
The Strategist
Jacob Ware
We need to treat disinformation as we deal with insurgencies, preventing the spreaders of lies from entrenching themselves in the host population through capture of infrastructure—in this case, the social media outlets. Combining targeted action with efforts to build resilience in the population, counterinsurgencies offer valuable lessons for the construction of a longer-term, society-wide plan to combat online disinformation.
Research
Blanket ban on teen smartphone use ‘potentially detrimental’, says academic
The Guardian
Jessica Elgot
A leading academic tasked by the UK government with reviewing the effects of smartphones on teenagers has suggested blanket bans are “unrealistic and potentially detrimental”. Amy Orben, from the University of Cambridge, will lead the work on children and smartphone use that has been commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology along with a team of other academics from a number of UK universities.
Events & Podcasts
Stop the World: The road to artificial general intelligence, with Helen Toner
ASPI
Australian AI expert Helen Toner is the Director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. She also spent two years on the board of OpenAI, which put her at the centre of the dramatic events in late 2023 when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was briefly sacked before being reinstated. David Wroe speaks with Helen about the curve humanity is on towards artificial general intelligence—which will be equal to or better than humans at everything—progress with the new “reasoning” models; the arrival of China’s DeepSeek; the need for regulation; democracy and AI; and the risks of AI.
Resilient Australia: Building security in a data-driven world
InnovationAus.com
Secure your place at InnovationAus.com's Resilient Australia forum at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra on Thursday, 10 April. Hosted by Hamish Macdonald, ABC journalist and co-host of the Radio National programs Global Roaming and Take Me to Your Leader!, this exclusive forum looks at trust and technology – and strategies for building resilience into global social and economic systems.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security Programs team at ASPI and supported by partners.
For more on China's pressure campaign against Taiwan—including military threats, interference and cyberwarfare, check out ASPI’s State of the Strait Weekly Digest.
