WhatsApp banned from US House of Representatives over security risks | Taiwan racing to build domestic drone industry | South Korea develops Korean AI-detection tool
AI firm DeepSeek is aiding China's military and intelligence operations
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Meta Platforms' WhatsApp messaging service has been banned from all U.S. House of Representatives devices, according to a memo sent to all House staff on Monday. The notice said the "Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use." Reuters
Taiwan is scrambling to build a domestic drone industry from scratch. The island nation, fearing imminent invasion from China, has both the need, know-how, and industry necessary to build a robust and advanced drone program. Yet Taiwan, which has set an ambitious target of producing 180,000 drones per year by 2028, is struggling to create this industry from scratch. WIRED
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the National Security Research Institute announced on the 23rd that they have developed technology for detecting AI-generated Korean comments for the first time in the world. Chosun Biz
ASPI
Keeping the Indo-Pacific on board with the global anti-spyware movement
The Strategist
Angela Suriyasenee and Gatra Priyandita
Launched in early 2024 by Britain and France, the Pall Mall Process is one of two global initiatives aiming to set norms to prevent the harmful proliferation of commercial spyware. But unless the process becomes more inclusive, flexible and responsive to emerging economies, it risks lacking global legitimacy. This is an opportunity to empower Global South countries to shape—and co-own—the spyware governance agenda. Spyware misuse is widespread. Indo-Pacific cases are growing too: Indonesian agencies have reportedly imported and deployed spyware via Singapore; Thailand has used Pegasus against pro-democracy activists; and Singapore has warned of spyware-linked phishing.
As the US looks inward, transnational crime prospers
The Strategist
John Coyne
The world is entering a new golden age of transnational crime, and Australia is on its path. Australia’s location, economic openness, and extensive supply chains make us a prime target for exploitation. Synthetic drug flows, human trafficking, cyber-enabled crime and illicit financial networks are converging—not at our borders, but upstream, in regions where our security partnerships are shallow or absent.
Australia
Expert resigns from teen social media ban tech trial advisory board over concerns
Crikey
Cam Wilson
An expert advising Australia’s $6.5 million teen social media ban tech trial has resigned over concerns about transparency and some of the trial’s initial findings. Other individuals and groups have also raised misgivings about the process. On Friday, the government-commissioned Age Assurance Technology Trial published a statement about its testing, saying it found that age assurance could be done in Australia in a “private, robust and effective” way. These findings, which would bolster Australia’s plan to soon introduce its “world-first” teen social media ban, were based on trial results that are not yet public.
‘Must remain a priority’: ACCC pushes for digital platforms reform
InnovationAus
Justin Hendry
Australia’s competition watchdog has urged the government to stay the course with its proposed digital competition regime, warning that existing laws are “insufficient” to tackle the market power of the Big Tech giants head on. As the government considers its next steps in the wake of threats by the US government, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission used the final report from its five-year digital platform services inquiry to reiterate the urgent need for reform. It has also uncovered “potential and emerging competition issues” in cloud computing and generative AI, particularly by the big three cloud service providers Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
YouTube should not be exempt from Australia’s under-16s social media ban, eSafety commissioner says
The Guardian
Josh Butler
YouTube should be included in the ban on under-16s accessing social media, the nation’s online safety chief has said as she urges the Albanese government to rethink its decision to carve out the video sharing platform from new rules which apply to apps such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, also recommended the government update its under-16s social media ban to specifically address features such as stories, streaks and AI chatbots which can disproportionately pose risk to young people.
Defence tech spies an opportunity in global crisis
Financial Times
Strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities will turn the spotlight on to the tools of war — and particularly those with a high-tech bent. Investors are getting on board: a €600mn investment in Germany’s Helsing announced last week values the artificial intelligence software-to-drones group at €12bn. Shares in Palantir, a data-crunching US company that serves the Pentagon, are up more than 80 per cent this year; its $325bn market capitalisation is quadruple that of BAE Systems.
China
Exclusive: DeepSeek aids China's military and evaded export controls, US official says
Reuters
Michael Martina and Stephen Nellis
AI firm DeepSeek is aiding China's military and intelligence operations, a senior U.S. official told Reuters, adding that the Chinese tech startup sought to use Southeast Asian shell companies to access high-end semiconductors that cannot be shipped to China under U.S. rules. "We understand that DeepSeek has willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China's military and intelligence operations," a senior State Department official told Reuters in an interview.
China looks to Singapore to help secure global supply chains from US trade war turmoil
South China Morning Post
Dewey Sim
China and Singapore should work together to safeguard global supply chains, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said on Monday as Beijing seeks deeper ties with neighbouring countries to help offset trade tensions with Washington. China, Li said, was willing to expand the scale of the country’s trade and investment with Singapore, strengthen cultural exchanges, and further cooperate in sectors including the digital economy and artificial intelligence. China was also willing to work with the city state and other ASEAN economies to promote regional cooperation, he said.
TikTok Shop battles Shein and Temu in Latin America’s e-commerce race
Rest of World
Melissa Amezcua
Hundreds of sellers in Mexico have flocked to TikTok Shop in recent months, even as the app faces pressure in the USA national security law passed last year requires TikTok to divest its U.S. business from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, or face a ban. President Donald Trump has delayed the ban thrice, with a deadline for this month extended by 90 days. Facing uncertainty and slower sales in the U.S. because of trade tensions, TikTok has turned its sights to the south, launching first in Mexico, and then in Brazil — earlier than some analysts had forecast.
USA
WhatsApp banned on US House of Representatives devices, memo shows
Reuters
Courtney Rozen
Meta Platforms' WhatsApp messaging service has been banned from all U.S. House of Representatives devices, according to a memo sent to all House staff on Monday. The notice said the "Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use."
US bombing of Iran likely to lead to increased risk of Iranian cyber attacks
CyberDaily
David Hollingworth
The United States’ will-they-or-won’t-they policy towards military intervention in Iran crystallised over the weekend when the Trump administration gave the green light to target Iranian nuclear infrastructure. While a military response, targeting US assets in the region, is possible, another, more likely scenario could be a stepping up of Iranian cyber activity. “In light of recent developments, the likelihood of disruptive cyber attacks against US targets by Iranian actors has increased. In recent years, Iran has primarily focused this activity on Israel, especially following October 7th. Those incidents offer useful insight into the capability and limitations of Iranian actors,” John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said in a recent statement to Cyber Daily.
Trump can pull the plug on the internet, and Europe can't do anything about it
POLITICO
Mathieu Pollet
Donald Trump’s return to the White House is forcing Europe to reckon with a major digital vulnerability: The U.S. holds a kill switch over its internet. As the U.S. administration raises the stakes in a geopolitical poker game that began when Trump started his trade war, Europeans are waking up to the fact that years of over-reliance on a handful of U.S. tech giants have given Washington a winning hand. The fatal vulnerability is Europe’s near-total dependency on U.S. cloud providers.
How U.S. export policy backfired
Technology and Security
James A. Lewis
It is hard to argue that America’s recent forays into tech policy have been a success, if success means outcompeting China. China now leads the world in the production of drones, robots, 5G networks, batteries, EVs, missiles, and ships. China is increasing its investments in research and technology to be able to surpass the U.S. and it will use home-grown technology as it builds the weapons that Ukraine and Iran show are essential for future warfare.
Americas
Canada says telcos were breached in China-linked espionage hacks
TechCrunch
Zack Whittaker
The Canadian government and the FBI say they are aware of malicious activity targeting telecommunication companies across Canada, attributing the intrusions to the China-backed hacking group Salt Typhoon. In a joint advisory out late Friday, the feds said at least one unnamed Canadian telco was hacked in mid-February this year, in which hackers manipulated three Cisco-made routers to allow stealthy traffic collection from its network.
North Asia
Taiwan is rushing to make Its own drones before its too late
Justin Ling
Unmanned vehicles are increasingly becoming essential weapons of war. But with a potential conflict with China looming large, Taiwan is scrambling to build a domestic drone industry from scratch. The island nation, fearing imminent invasion from China, has both the need, know-how, and industry necessary to build a robust and advanced drone program. Yet Taiwan, which has set an ambitious target of producing 180,000 drones per year by 2028, is struggling to create this industry from scratch. Last year, it produced fewer than 10,000.
KAIST develops AI comment detection technology to combat online manipulation in Korea
Chosun Biz
Lee Jong-hyun
The use of artificial intelligence technology as a tool for manipulating public opinion is on the rise. Although technologies for detecting AI-generated text are being developed, they primarily rely on lengthy, standardized texts in English. This means there are limitations in identifying AI comments on news platforms that are problematic in Korea. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the National Security Research Institute announced on the 23rd that they have developed technology for detecting AI-generated Korean comments for the first time in the world.
Seoul on edge as US considers revoking chip equipment waivers
The Chosun Daily
Byun Hee-won, Jo Jae-hee and Park Su-hyeon
Since 2022, the United States has barred exports of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, part of a broader effort to curb Beijing’s access to cutting-edge chipmaking technology. Yet key allies such as South Korea and Taiwan have been granted exemptions, allowing companies like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to continue operating their Chinese factories with minimal disruption. Now, those carveouts may be coming to an end.
Southeast Asia
Historic crypto heist highlights Thailand’s cybersecurity crisis
The Nation
Experts warn that Thailand’s rapid digital expansion is making it a prime target for cyber attacks as crypto exchange Bybit suffers a record $1.5 billion hack. Thai servers suffered 732,620 cyberattacks in 2024, marking a 125.91% from 324,295 attacks in 2023, the latest report on cybersecurity published by Kaspersky last week showed. The report was released just as Thailand saw the largest cryptocurrency hack in history on Friday, when Bybit, a cryptocurrency trading platform was hacked and $1.5 billion worth of crypto assets were stolen, most of which were via the Ethereum crypto platform. The assets were quickly transferred across several accounts.
Why Filipinos see politicians as the top source of disinformation
The Straits Times
Mara Cepeda
A study that found that Filipinos see politicians as the top source of disinformation online has underlined the rise in distrust towards the country’s leaders, amid intensifying rivalry between the Marcos and Duterte camps. The 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report released on June 17 found that Filipinos are more likely than people in other countries to blame politicians for the spread of false information online.
Ukraine - Russia
APT28 hackers use Signal chats to launch new malware attacks on Ukraine
Bleeping Computer
Bill Toulas
The Russian state-sponsored threat group APT28 is using Signal chats to target government targets in Ukraine with two previously undocumented malware families named BeardShell and SlimAgent. To be clear, this is not a security issue in Signal. Instead, threat actors are more commonly utilizing the messaging platform as part of their phishing attacks due to its increased usage by governments worldwide. The attacks were first discovered by Ukraine's Computer and Emergency Response in March 2024, though limited details about the infection vector were uncovered at the time.
Europe
Swedish PM calls for a pause of the EU’s AI rules
POLITICO
Pieter Haeck
The EU’s artificial intelligence rules should be paused, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Monday ahead of a meeting with EU leaders this week in Brussels. While officials in countries including the Czech Republic and Poland have shown openness to the idea of delaying the rules, it’s the first time that a government leader has weighed in. Kristersson slammed the EU's AI rules as "confusing" during a meeting with Swedish parliament lawmakers on Monday morning and said he would raise this with fellow leaders this week. “An example of confusing EU regulations is the fact that the so-called AI Act is to come into force without there being common standards,” Kristersson said.
Germany to boost defence spending at faster rate than France or UK
Financial Times
Anne-Sylvaine Chassany
Berlin plans a 70% increase in military spending to €162bn by 2029, according to leaked paper. Germany will boost defence spending by more than two-thirds by 2029, outpacing France and the UK as Chancellor Friedrich Merz drives a massive rearmament of Europe’s largest country in the face of an aggressive Russia and a volatile America.
Cyber cops have a problem: They keep making hackers sound cute
The Wall Street Journal
Angus Loten
When Dutch intelligence services last month blamed a massive data breach at the Netherlands national police corps on a cabal of Russian-backed hackers linked to espionage in Ukraine and NATO member states, they identified their attacker as Laundry Bear. “I hate these cutesie names,” said the chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm CYE Security and a former intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency. “We’re not playing a kid’s game here. We’re not naming Care Bears.”
Middle East
Bank hacks, internet shutdowns and crypto heists: Here’s how the war between Israel and Iran is playing out in cyberspace
POLITICO
Maggie Miller
The conflict between the two Middle East adversaries has so far largely played out in public view, with hundreds of missiles and drones causing mass casualties across major cities. But Iran and Israel have also been launching cyber attacks against one another from the shadows — which officials are now warning may soon spill over onto U.S. targets. The National Terrorism Advisory System warned Sunday of a range of Iranian threats to the U.S., including attacks on “poorly secured U.S. networks and Internet-connected devices.”
What satellite images reveal about the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites
WIRED
Brian Barrett, Lily Hay Newman and Andrew Couts
The US concentrated its attack on Fordow, an enrichment plant built hundreds of feet underground. Aerial photos give important clues about what damage the “bunker-buster” bombs may have caused. It is currently unclear how impactful this weekend’s bombing campaign will be on Iran’s long-term nuclear ambitions. Lewis says the strike was “tactically brilliant, but strategically incomplete,” because Iranians still have nuclear material that can be enriched to weapons-grade levels. “They still have underground facilities where they could do that, and they still have the ability to produce centrifuge components, so they can still make the centrifuges for the facilities.”
Iran-linked cyberattack reportedly disrupts public services in Albania’s capital
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
A cyberattack by an Iranian hacker group disrupted multiple public services in Albania’s capital, Tirana, late last week, taking down the city’s official website and affecting local government operations, local media reported. The group, known as Homeland Justice and previously linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claimed responsibility for the breach, saying it had taken down the city’s official website, exfiltrated data and wiped servers. The hackers cited Albania’s hosting of the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e-Khalq as the motive for the attack.
A woman tried to call her mom in Iran. A robotic voice answered the phone
Associated Press
Farnoush Amiri and Sarah El Deeb
When Ellie, a British-Iranian living in the United Kingdom, tried to call her mother in Tehran, a robotic female voice answered instead. Ellie, 44, is one of nine Iranians living abroad — including in the U.K and U.S. — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in Iran since Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago. It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though four of the experts believed it was likely to be the Iranian government while the fifth saw Israel as more likely.
Big Tech
Tesla robotaxi incidents draw Scrutiny from US safety agency
Bloomberg
Craig Trudell and Kara Carlson
US auto safety regulators are investigating incidents where Tesla's self-driving robotaxis appeared to violate traffic laws during the company's first day offering paid rides in Austin. The incidents, captured in videos posted on social media, include a Tesla entering an intersection in a left-turn-only lane, hesitating, and then proceeding into an unoccupied lane meant for traffic moving in the opposite direction. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is gathering additional information from Tesla and will take necessary actions to protect road safety following an assessment of the reports and other relevant information.
Artificial Intelligence
AI slop spreads in Israel-Iran war
POLITICO
Dana Nickel
The U.S. over the weekend struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, escalating the war between Israel and Iran. But beyond physical attacks, there is growing concern that artificial intelligence could increasingly be wielded as a weapon to spread misinformation and shape public opinion. AI-generated deepfake images and videos related to the conflict have flooded social media since tensions erupted on June 13, falsely claiming to show damage to Israeli cities and airports. And world leaders have spread AI-generated images to support their narratives on the war. “We’re seeing synthetic media and misattributed content move faster than people can fact-check it,” said Dave Gerry, CEO of cybersecurity firm Bugcrowd.
Misc
The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs
The Verge
Jack Buehrer
The music industry’s nightmare came true in 2023, and it sounded a lot like Drake. “Heart on My Sleeve,” a convincingly fake duet between Drake and The Weeknd, racked up millions of streams before anyone could explain who made it or where it came from. The track didn’t just go viral — it broke the illusion that anyone was in control. In the scramble to respond, a new category of infrastructure is quietly taking shape that’s built not to stop generative music outright, but to make it traceable. Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery.
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.