Latvia confirms phishing attack on Ministry of Defense | China’s top nuclear-weapons lab used American computer chips decades after ban | U.S. and EU to launch first-of-its-kind AI agreement (2024)

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The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses onthe topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.

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The Russian cyber-espionage group known as Gamaredon may have been behind a phishing attack on Latvia’s Ministry of Defense last week, the ministry told The Record on Friday. Hackers sent malicious emails to several employees of the ministry, pretending to be Ukrainian government officials. The attempted cyberattack was unsuccessful, the ministry added.The Record by Recorded Future
China’s top nuclear-weapons research institute has bought sophisticated U.S. computer chips at least a dozen times in the past two and half years, circumventing decades-old American export restrictions meant to curb such sales.The Wall Street Journal
The United States and European Union on Friday announced an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, healthcare, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid.Reuters

World

U.S. and EU to launch first-of-its-kind AI agreement
Reuters
Suzanne Smalley
The United States and European Union on Friday announced an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, healthcare, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid.

Australia

Schools crack down on AI as chatbot cheats test teachers
The Australian
Natasha Bita
Students will be taught “ethical’’ ways to use artificial intelligence to write school assignments, despite three states cutting off classroom access to a chatbot widely used for cheating.

China

China’s top nuclear-weapons lab used American computer chips decades after ban
The Wall Street Journal
Liza Lin and Dan Strumpf
China’s top nuclear-weapons research institute has bought sophisticated U.S. computer chips at least a dozen times in the past two and half years, circumventing decades-old American export restrictions meant to curb such sales.

Apple brings mainland Chinese web censorship to Hong Kong
The Intercept
Sam Biddle
When Safari users in Hong Kong recently tried to load the popular code-sharing website GitLab, they received a strange warning instead: Apple’s browser was blocking the site for their own safety. The access was temporarily cut off thanks to Apple’s use of a Chinese corporate website blacklist, which resulted in the innocuous site being flagged as a purveyor of misinformation. Neither Tencent, the massive Chinese firm behind the web filter, nor Apple will say how or why the site was censored.

China mulls protecting solar tech dominance with export ban
Bloomberg
Dan Murtaugh
China is considering an export ban that would help the nation maintain its substantial dominance in solar manufacturing just as other countries are trying to strengthen their industries.

USA

Biden mulling broad prohibitions on U.S. investments in Chinese tech
POLITICO
Gavin Bade
The White House is considering new action to block U.S. business with entire swaths of the Chinese tech economy — an investment blockade stricter than previously reported — according to the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and four other congressional and former national security officials.

DoD to assess department-wide guidance on ‘contested information environment’ training
Breaking Defense
Jaspreet Gill
The Pentagon plans to develop department-wide guidance on what content it should include in its training and education efforts for decision-making in a “contested information environment,” following recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office.

Chinese engineer sentenced to 8 years in U.S. prison for spying
NBC News
Chantal Da Silva
A former Chicago graduate student in electrical engineering was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison for spying for the Chinese government. "This tasking was part of an effort by the Jiangsu provincial department to obtain access to advanced aerospace and satellite technologies being developed by companies within the U.S.," the Justice Department said.

North Asia

Cyberattacks on Japan soar as hackers target vulnerabilities
Nikkei Asia
Akinobu Iwasawa
The number of cyberattacks in Japan is surging as hackers try to exploit the country's weak defenses. Japan has lagged other advanced nations in updating systems to detect attacks and protect data, according to cybersecurity experts.

Japanese firms step up intelligence gathering as US-China tensions mount
Financial Times
Eri Sugiura and Kana Inagaki
A growing number of Japanese businesses are strengthening their intelligence gathering as the country finds itself increasingly exposed to the mounting tensions between the US and China. Companies in sectors that have historically been less exposed to geopolitical disruptions — including Suntory and Mitsubishi Chemical — have hired risk executives and created new job roles and dedicated teams in recent months, as they catch up with their counterparts in more politically sensitive sectors.

Southeast Asia

BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight

🚨🧵Two years after the military coup in Myanmar, a report exclusively obtained by @BBCNewsnight and @BBCtrending shows female supporters of democracy are being systematically targeted with hate speech, abuse and doxxing. #WhatsHappeninglnMyanmar 🇲🇲

10:08 PM ∙ Jan 25, 2023

250Likes212Retweets

South & Central Asia

India just took a dangerous step on disinformation
The Washington Post
Rana Ayyub
India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology filed a draft amendment last week to a recent media law that could have sweeping consequences for free expression in the world’s largest democracy. According to the proposed language, any information marked as “fake” by the fact-checking division of India’s Press Information Bureau will need to be taken down by “online intermediaries,” a category that would include social media companies.

Ukraine - Russia

Russia’s Sandworm hackers blamed in fresh Ukraine malware attack
CyberScoop
AJ Vicens
One of the Russian military’s most prolific hacking units deployed yet another destructive malware attack against Ukrainian targets this week, researchers with cybersecurity firm ESET said Friday. The researchers attributed the attack to the hacking unit known widely as “Sandworm,” a group in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, behind a series of destructive malware attacks and hack-and-leak campaigns over the years, according to the U.S. government and private researchers.

Racial slurs discovered in leaked Yandex source code
CyberScoop
AJ Vicens
Russian tech giant Yandex apologized on Friday for racial slurs uncovered in the company’s source code. The apology came in response to the discovery of multiple references to the N-word in the company’s code base after it leaked online. “We deeply regret that this word ever appeared in our internal codes,” the Yandex press office told CyberScoop in an email Friday.

Europe

Latvia confirms phishing attack on Ministry of Defense, linking it to Russian hacking group
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
The Russian cyber-espionage group known as Gamaredon may have been behind a phishing attack on Latvia’s Ministry of Defense last week, the ministry told The Record on Friday. Hackers sent malicious emails to several employees of the ministry, pretending to be Ukrainian government officials. The attempted cyberattack was unsuccessful, the ministry added.

Greece's spy scandal must shake us out of complacency
EU Observer
Glykeria Arapi
A surveillance scandal that has smouldered for almost a year erupted this week after the leader of Greece's main opposition party filed a no-confidence motion against the government after a string of exposés that journalists and politicians were targeted with spyware and/or were under state surveillance. The controversy began in March last year when digital rights group Citizen Lab told journalist Thanasis Koukakis that his phone had been under surveillance for ten weeks by powerful spyware called Predator.

Africa

Govt internet shutdowns cripple civil society, dissent in Africa
All Africa
According to Bibbi Abruzzini of IPS, Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition have documented that during 2021 at least 182 internet shutdowns in 34 countries were used as a tactic to suppress dissent and quell unrest. This tactic has been used by multiple African governments, particularly during election periods. "African countries that went to the polls in recent years have developed an affinity to restrict internet access before, during and after elections especially in countries where there are disputes," said Leah Mitaba of the Zambia Council for Social Development.

Gender & Women in Tech

After layoffs, Meta, tech companies face uphill battle to boost diversity
The Washington Post
Naomi Nix
The technology industry has long struggled to recruit a diverse workforce, but the recent spate of cuts by Silicon Valley companies has hit women particularly hard, according to recently published analyses of demographic data from the layoffs. Women and some minorities were particularly vulnerable to layoffs because they were newer to their jobs and occupied roles that companies were less interested in retaining, experts said.

Big Tech

Tears, blunders and chaos: inside Elon Musk’s Twitter
The Guardian
Zoë Schiffer, Casey Newton and Alex Heath
In the three months since Musk bought Twitter for £44bn, thousands have been sacked and the company has nosedived. Here, staff tell of a firm in disarray and an owner whose reputation is also plummeting.

A leaked internal message appears to show Elon Musk ordered Twitter staff to suspend a left-wing activist's account
Business Insider
Pete Syme
A leaked internal Twitter message appears to show that Elon Musk directly ordered staff to suspend a left-wing activist's account on the social-media platform. Bloomberg said it viewed a screenshot of the message in question, involving the account of Chad Loder, which read: "Suspension: direct request from Elon Musk." Loder told Insider's Sawdah Bhaimiya they suspected the suspension resulted from an "organized mass-reporting campaign," whereby a right-wing group published a Substack blog with instructions on how to falsely report breaches of Twitter's rules by particular accounts — with Loder's profile listed near the top.
Twitter says users will be able to appeal account suspension
Reuters
Juby Babu
Twitter users will be able to appeal account suspensions and be evaluated under the social media platform's new criteria for reinstatement, starting Feb. 1, the company said on Friday.

Twitter research group stall complicates compliance with new EU law
Reuters
Sheila Dang
The stalling of a Twitter program that was critical for outside researchers studying disinformation campaigns throws into question the company's strategy to comply with upcoming regulation in Europe, former employees and experts told Reuters.

With Trump reinstatement, Meta finds new ways to punish world leaders
The Washington Post
Naomi Nix
With its announcement that it would be reinstating former president Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, Meta warned that it could take a stronger stance against world leaders who post content that exacerbates civil unrest or breaks its rules.

Artificial Intelligence

What does GPT-3 “know” about me?
MIT Technology Review
Melissa Heikkilä
Large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI’s GPT-3, Google’s LaMDA, and Meta’s OPT-175B, are red hot in AI research, and they are becoming an increasingly integral part of the internet’s plumbing. LLMs are being used to power chatbots that help with customer service, to create more powerful online search, and to help software developers write code. If you’ve posted anything even remotely personal in English on the internet, chances are your data might be part of some of the world’s most popular LLMs.

Misc

Your therapist shouldn’t be on TikTok
The New Statesman
Sarah Manavis
When therapy is going well it is a judgement-free space where you can be truly honest about your feelings and flaws. Your therapist creates a safe environment where you can explore the hardest parts of yourself without fear. The thoughts flow. Walking out of a session you feel lighter, safe in the knowledge that whatever came up in that last hour will remain between you and this trusted person. Which is why I can’t then imagine how it must feel to open up social media later that same day to find your wise, trusted therapist sharing information about your session through the medium of a sassy dance routine, performed while lip syncing along to a Jack Harlow song.

SBF, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the spectacular hangover after the art world’s NFT gold rush
Vanity Fair
Nate Freeman
Auction houses and talent agencies thought the Web3 works were a fast track to billions. If it weren’t for a global crypto meltdown, they might have pulled it off.

Events & Podcasts

ASPI @ASPI_org

🚨 SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨@ASPI_org & @orfonline are pleased to announce the inaugural Raisina @ Sydney Dialogue. Hosted in Sydney, discussions will focus on the importance of the 🇦🇺-🇮🇳 partnership amidst contestation & competition in the Indo-Pacific. More details below🧵

2:49 AM ∙ Jan 25, 2023

85Likes31Retweets

AI Standards Hub @AIStandardsHub

The European Standards Organisations have been charged with developing #harmonised #standards to support the implementation of the #EU #AIAct. Join us for a webinar to hear directly from the chair of the CEN-CENELEC joint committee for #AI.Register➡️ bit.ly/3jdkrMD

4:40 PM ∙ Jan 27, 2023

12Likes5Retweets

Jobs

ICPC Data Scientist/Data Analyst
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has an outstanding opportunity for a talented Data Scientist or Data Analyst to join its growing centre. The role is suitable for applicants with between 2-8 years professional experience. Candidates with less than 1-year professional experience are encouraged to emphasise non-technical skills that they would bring to the role. For example, include evidence of well-developed communication skills, team collaboration abilities, or policy experience.

ICPC Senior Analyst or Analyst - China
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for exceptional and experienced China-focused senior analysts or analysts to join its centre. This role will focus on original research and analysis centred around the (growing) range of topics which our ICPC China team work on. Our China team produces some of the most impactful and well-read policy-relevant research in the world, with our experts often being called upon by politicians, governments, corporates and civil society actors to provide briefings and advice.

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