US freezes efforts to aid states in securing election | Ukraine warns AI use in Russian cyber-espionage | Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests

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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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• The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen all of its election security work and is reviewing everything it has done to help state and local officials secure their elections for the past eight years. WIRED

• Russia is increasingly using artificial intelligence to analyse data stolen in cyberattacks, making its operations more precise and effective, according to Ukrainian cyber officials. The Record by Recorded Future

• Google has cooperated with autocratic regimes around the world, including the Kremlin in Russia and the Chinese Communist Party, to facilitate censorship requests, an Observer investigation can reveal. The Guardian

ASPI

The Pacific needs greater cyber resilience as malicious actors break into networks
The Strategist
Blake Johnson, Fitriani and Jocelinn Kang
Samoa and Papua New Guinea’s recent experiences with cyber intrusions are the latest reminders of the urgent need for enhanced cybersecurity resilience in the Pacific. What’s needed is capacity building and coordinated response initiatives. Australia has worked with Pacific nations to enhance their incident response capabilities, provide technical assistance and facilitate information sharing.

Indonesia needs a tech council to navigate the digital future
The Jakarta Post
Gatra Priyandita and Jascha Ramba Santoso
Indonesia’s international engagements on tech-related issues, from procurement of ICT equipment to technology and knowledge transfers, have been dictated by economic pragmatism and development needs. While Indonesia currently benefits from sustained Chinese and US investments in its Information and Communication Technology sector, it must prepare for deeper strategic competition in technology that extends beyond sensitive industries.

World

A bird’s-eye view of the Paris AI Action Summit: Regulation, power, and alternatives
Tech Global Institute
Lucas Anjos
While world leaders, major tech CEOs, and policymakers debated regulatory frameworks and economic competitiveness, usually advocating for a mutually exclusive view of regulation vs. innovation, the summit largely mirrored previous gatherings in its focus on maintaining the dominance of established players. However, beneath the surface of corporate influence and on the sidelines of state-driven AI nationalism, we saw some alternative models and perspectives—particularly from the Global South—emerging to challenge the status quo.

Australia

Australian National University investigating alleged cyber attack
CyberDaily
David Hollingworth
The Australian National University is investigating an alleged ransomware attack after the institution was listed as a victim on the darknet leak site of fsociety hacking group. No ransom amount was given; however, fsociety is threatening to publish the data within seven days. At the time of writing, the group has not disclosed how much data was allegedly stolen.

Money laundering watchdog puts 50 Australian crypto exchanges on notice
The Australian Financial Review
Amelia McGuire
The financial crimes regulator has written to 50 Australian cryptocurrency exchanges with concerns that they are being used to launder the proceeds of crime, including human trafficking and drug dealing. The Australian Securities and Transactions Analysis Centre said the exchanges that let people buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have failed to dutifully report suspicious transactions in line with their anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing requirements.

China

China tightens grip on tech, minerals and engineers as trade war spirals
Financial Times
Ryan McMorrow, Christian Davies, Kathrin Hille, John Reed and Zijing Wu
Chinese authorities in recent months have made it more difficult for some engineers and equipment to leave the country, proposed new export controls to retain key battery technologies, and moved to restrict technologies for processing critical minerals, according to multiple industry figures and ministry notices. Among the companies to be hit is Apple’s main manufacturing partner Foxconn.

China’s Xi Jinping to hold high-level meeting on Monday with top tech entrepreneurs
South China Morning Post
Between 20 and 30 founders and chief executives from China’s largest technology companies were expected to assemble in Beijing on Monday, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The meeting comes at a critical time for China before the national legislature and the political advisory body enter their annual meetings.

How DeepSeek’s AI has become a must-have feature in Chinese smart EVs
South China Morning Post
Daniel Ren
More than a dozen carmakers, from EV leader BYD to Stellantis-backed start-up Leapmotor, have announced plans to develop cars fitted with DeepSeek AI features over the past two weeks. Chinese motorists’ increasing desire for smart vehicles has prompted major EV builders to improve their autonomous driving technology and digital cockpits over the past few years.

Chinese spies suspected of 'moonlighting' as tawdry ransomware crooks
The Register
Jessica Lyons
A crew identified as a Chinese government-backed espionage group appears to have started moonlighting as a ransomware player – further evidence that lines are blurring between nation-state cyberspies and financially motivated cybercriminals. There is mounting evidence that Mustang Panda, or someone using Mustang Panda's backdoor somehow, is not only spying on governmental organizations, it's also extorting victims with ransomware.

USA

Top US election security watchdog forced to stop election security work
WIRED
Eric Geller
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen all of its election security work and is reviewing everything it has done to help state and local officials secure their elections for the past eight years. The move represents the first major example of the country’s cyberdefense agency accommodating President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud and online censorship.

Trump may not support foreign firm operating Intel's US factories
Reuters
Arsheeya Bajwa
President Donald Trump's administration may not support Intel's US chip factories being operated by a foreign entity, a White House official told Reuters. The comment was in response to a Bloomberg report that Taiwan's TSMC, the world's biggest chipmaker, was considering taking a controlling stake in Intel's factories at Trump's request.

The technology team at financial regulator CFPB has been gutted
The Verge
Lauren Feiner
Around 20 technologists at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were fired last week, gutting a team that specialized in understanding Big Tech’s entrance into financial products. The agency’s former technologists fear that consumer complaints will go unanswered, and companies will be able to get away with shady practices by obscuring them with technical complexity.

Putting the human back into AI is key, former NSA Director Nakasone says
The Record by Recorded Future
Dina Temple-Raston
“Looking at the next generation of national security professionals, I want policy people who can code and coders who can do policy,” said the former head of the National Security Agency General Paul Nakasone at the Munich Cyber Security Conference. Nakasone, who is now the director of Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security, says that is precisely what he started to see when he was leading the U.S.’s largest spy agency — young recruits were fundamentally wired differently than the operators and analysts who came before them.

Americas

Tired of spotty internet, Bolivians are smuggling in Starlink
Rest of World
William Wroblewski
Fed up with the state-run internet infrastructure, which relies on the Chinese satellite Túpac Katari 1 in some measure, Bolivians have been turning to Starlink, which was banned in August. On Facebook pages, sellers in Peru and Chile — where Starlink is legally available — promise direct delivery, while other users travel abroad to buy them, returning home with the kits stuffed in their carry-on bags.

North Asia

Japan’s $1.5bn bet on ultra-thin solar cells in challenge to China
Financial Times
Harry Demsey
Japan is betting $1.5bn on a breakthrough in next-generation ultra-thin, light and bendy solar panels, subsidising the commercialisation of a technology that analysts say could disrupt China’s dominance of renewable energy and reduce Tokyo’s dependence on fossil fuels. Perovskite cells are 20 times thinner than regular solar panels and could be plastered over stadiums, airports and office buildings, enabling mass adoption of solar in a mountainous country that lacks the open space needed for more conventional solar farms.

Taiwan pledges chip talks and investment to mollify Trump
Reuters
Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te pledged to talk with the United States about President Donald Trump's concerns over the chip industry and to increase US investment and buy more from the country, while also spending more on defence. Democratic countries including the United States should come together to build a global alliance for AI chips and a "democratic supply chain" for advanced chips, Lai said.

Taiwan using AI to fight disinformation campaigns, former minister says
The Record by Recorded Future
Dina Temple-Raston
Taiwan’s first-ever minister of digital affairs, Audrey Tang, said that the island nation is using AI to battle disinformation on social media. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said the number of pieces of false or biased information distributed by China increased 60% in 2024, to 2.16 million from 1.33 million in 2023.

Southeast Asia

Hundreds of foreigners freed from Myanmar's scam centres
BBC
Jonathan Head
More than 250 people from 20 nationalities who had been working in telecom fraud centres in Myanmar's Karen State have been released by an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand. The workers, more than half of whom were from African or Asian nations, were received by the Thai army, and are being assessed to find out if they were victims of human trafficking.

South & Central Asia

India could play a key role in AI development, Infosys co-founder says
The Record by Recorded Future
Dina Temple-Raston
Indian billionaire and chairman of tech giant Infosys Limited Nandan Nilekani said that the country is poised to emerge as one of the biggest users and developers of AI as it rapidly adapts to the digital world. India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced earlier this month that half a dozen startups were working on foundational AI models that could be ready within the year.

Ukraine - Russia

Ukraine warns of growing AI use in Russian cyber-espionage operations
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
For years, Russian hackers have exfiltrated vast amounts of data from Ukrainian government agencies, military personnel, and ordinary citizens. However, analyzing and utilising these large datasets has posed a challenge. Now, AI is helping to bridge that gap, according to Ihor Malchenyuk, director of the cyberdefense department at Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection.

The underexploited potential of Ukrainian defence tech
The Strategist
Oleksandr Ihnatenko
Western companies and entrepreneurs are largely missing a chance to invest in the thriving and innovative Ukrainian defence tech industry and take its experience back to their home markets. Failure of foreign investors to put even modest sums into the Ukrainian defence industry also means that Western armed forces are missing out on rapid developments, for example in drone technology.

As Cubans flock to Russia's war, is Havana playing dumb?
Radio Free Europe
Valeria Yehoshyna, Olya Ivleva, Kyrylo Ovsyaniy, Kira Tolstyakova and Schemes
Unlike North Koreans, Cuban fighters in Russia have left a significant social media footprint, with many openly embracing the Kremlin's militarism and ideology. "Based on passports obtained by Ukrainian hackers, our own information from Cuba, numerous videos we've seen, and reports of some Cubans killed in combat, we can estimate that around 5,000 Cuban soldiers are fighting for Russia," said Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, co-founder of the Cuban Democratic Directorate.

Europe

Sweden’s PM on suspected cable sabotage: ‘We don’t believe random things suddenly happen quite often’
The Record by Recorded Future
Alexander Martin
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that the country didn’t believe a series of submarine cable cuts in the Baltic Sea were simply coincidental. Reports citing anonymous intelligence officials have suggested Western authorities are assessing the spate of cable breakages in the Baltic Sea to be accidents rather than acts of sabotage, although experts outside of those agencies have argued such assessments are flawed.

Stimmen aus Moskau: Russian influence operations target German elections
The Record by Recorded Future
Insikt Group
The German federal elections, scheduled for February 23, 2025, are the target of malign influence operations linked to Russia and Russia-based actors. As of mid-February 2025, Insikt Group assesses that, despite their persistence, these efforts have very likely not meaningfully altered voter behavior or shaped public opinion in a manner advantageous to Russia’s broader geopolitical interests.

UK

MI5 investigates use of Chinese green technology in UK
Financial Times
Jim Pickard, Rachel Millard, Simeon Kerr, Lucy Fisher and John Paul Rathbone
Britain’s security services are taking part in a review into China’s growing role in the UK’s energy system amid concerns over Beijing’s influence in strategic national infrastructure. MI5 is helping establish the extent to which the use of Chinese technology such as solar panels or industrial batteries could pose potential future security threats, according to people close to the situation.

Britain dances to JD Vance’s tune as it renames AI institute
POLITICO
Tom Bristow
“The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety,” Vance said. Britain was listening. The country’s science and tech ministry said on last week that its AI Safety Institute, the world’s first, would focus on “serious AI risks with security implications” and change its name. The AI Security Institute will focus on cybersecurity and partner with the Ministry of Defence to mitigate biosecurity risks, while also working with the Home Office on fraud and the use of AI to create child abuse images.

• UK’s AI Safety Institute becomes ‘UK AI Security Institute’
  UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, AI Security Institute
  The Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP
  Speaking at the Munich Security Conference and just days after the conclusion of the AI Action Summit in Paris, Peter Kyle has today recast the AI Safety Institute the ‘AI Security Institute’. This new name will reflect its focus on serious AI risks with security implications, such as how the technology can be used to develop chemical and biological weapons, how it can be used to carry out cyber-attacks, and enable crimes such as fraud and child sexual abuse.

NZ & Pacific Islands

New Zealand’s Kiribati aid review further opens door for Chinese influence
The Diplomat
Jonah Bock
New Zealand’s announced review of its development aid to Kiribati after a diplomatic rift between the two countries should sound alarm bells in Washington. By highlighting Kiribati’s turn away from the West, Wellington has both exposed the problem and introduced new opportunities for China to deepen its economic and political influence.

Gender & Women in Tech

Online forums being used to trade explicit images of local women, says charity
The Guardian
Alex Topping
An underground network of men are using peer-to-peer internet message boards to order, share and trade explicit images of local women, according to the UK’s leading Revenge Porn Helpline. The helpline has had a 57% average yearly increase in reports. The hotline has introduced a chatbot to meet rising demand for its services that helps about 50 people a day and receives between 350 and 400 in-person calls a month.

Big Tech

Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests
The Guardian
Sian Boyle
Google has cooperated with autocratic regimes around the world, including the Kremlin in Russia and the Chinese Communist party, to facilitate censorship requests, an Observer investigation can reveal. The technology company has engaged with the administrations of about 150 countries since 2011 that want information scrubbed from their public domains.

Meta confirms ‘Project Waterworth,’ a global subsea cable project spanning 50,000 kilometers
TechCrunch
Ingrid Lunden
Lining up with what we had heard about the project months ago, the network will connect five continents, with landing points in the United States, Brazil, India, South Africa, and other key regions. Facebook particularly calls out the opportunities in India, and the role that the network will play in how it rolls out AI services globally, as two key reasons for building the network.

Apple, Google restore TikTok App after assurances from Trump
Bloomberg
Mark Gurman
Apple and Google had removed TikTok in the US last month to comply with a law passed in 2024. In a Jan. 20 executive order, Trump said he instructed the attorney general “not to take any action to enforce the act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward.” Last week, the software had returned to the Apple App Store and Google Play store.

Artificial Intelligence

Tech companies pledged to protect elections from AI — Here’s how they did
Brennan Center for Justice
Abdiaziz Ahmed, Owen Doyle, David Evan Harris, Lawrence Norden
One year ago, 27 AI companies and social media platforms signed an accord that highlighted how AI-generated disinformation could undermine elections around the world. While some signatories shared evidence of their actions, inconsistent follow-through, vague reporting, and a lack of independent verification made it challenging to assess real progress.

Misc

Rape under wraps: how Tinder, Hinge and their corporate owner chose profits over safety
The Guardian
Emily Elena Dugdale and Hanisha Harjani
Match Group has known since 2016 about abusive users on its dozen dating apps, but leaves millions of people in the dark. Match Group promised in 2020 that it would release what’s known as a transparency report – a public document that would reveal data on harm occurring on and off its platforms. As of February 2025, the report has not been released.

Research

AI and intellectual property: Navigating the challenges of data scraping
Global Partnership on AI
Lee Tiedrich, Karine Perset, Sara Fialho Esposito
The Global Partnership on AI has released a new report examining the intellectual property implications of how organisations collect and use data to train AI systems, with a particular focus on data scraping. The report acknowledges that while updating IP laws may be desired by at least some jurisdictions in the long term, flexible and voluntary measures can help address immediate challenges while accommodating diverse legal approaches across jurisdictions.

Our world faces 'unprecedented' spike in electricity demand
The Register
Brandon Vigliarolo
The IEA's report examines the current state of the electricity market and how it's likely to change between 2025 and 2027, forecasting that the world is going to need an additional 3,500 terawatt-hours of energy generation to meet rising demand over the next three years. That, the IEA noted, is the equivalent of adding more electricity consumption than Japan, per year, between now and 2027.

Events & Podcasts

Women in Tech Global Summit
NTT and Japan Expo 2025
The Women in Tech Global Summit 2025, taking place in Osaka on April 23-25, is set to be a defining event in shaping the future of women in innovation. This Annual Meeting will bring together a diverse group of leaders from government, business, and civil society to critically examine the current status of women in the technological landscape and set priorities for the forthcoming year.

Sydney Neurotech meetup: Neuralink and the future of brain interfacing
Sydney Knowledge Hub
The Sydney Neurotech Meetup is a casual evening of conversation with Sydney's truly impressive collection of neurotech startups, researchers, investors and collaborators. For our next event, Luke Gordon will be joining us to discuss his career journey to Neuralink, the research the company is leading and what the future has in store for us.

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