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TOP 3

• The Kremlin warned that reported American hacking into Russia’s electric power grid could escalate into a cyberwar with the United States, but insisted that it was confident in the system’s ability to repel electronic attacks. NYT

• Iran said on Monday it had exposed a large cyber espionage network it alleged was run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and that several U.S. spies had been arrested in different countries as the result of this action. Reuters

• Chinese police have detained two men and reprimanded another for spreading online rumours about telecommunications equipment manufacturer Huawei, state news agency Xinhua reported late on Thursday. Reuters

ASPI ICPC​

FEATURE REPORT: Hacking democracies
By Fergus Hanson, Sarah O'Connor, Mali Walker & Luke Courtois

In this policy brief, the writers explore areas where interference has been detected across the world and consider key learnings from those examples in order to develop policy responses for countering each type of interference.

ASPI was honoured to have Senator Reynolds deliver the Keynote address at the War in 2025 conference last week. Senator Reynolds raised concerns about the threat of malevolent cyber attacks in her speech.

5G just part of technology's 'new Cold War frontline'
ZDNet
@stilgherrian
The next half-decade will see "more pronounced competition" between nations when it comes to technology, both civilian and military, according to Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, autonomous systems, quantum computing, and "the rest" are "rapidly emerging as the new Cold War frontline in global politics," he told APSI's "War in 2025" conference in Canberra last week.

Australia

Dutton's non-denial fuels fears of domestic ASD cyber spying
ZDNet
@stilgherrian
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has tried yet again to hose down fears that the government wants to extend Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) surveillance to domestic targets.

It’s time to be realistic—the Federal Government has failed on cybersecurity
CSO
When it comes to cybersecurity, the Australian Federal Government is failing. This is not hyperbole. Compared to other countries with similar levels of economic development, Australia is woefully behind. In a world where cyber-attacks are proliferating, where whole cities being taken hostage by hackers is longer science fiction, many of our government agencies are struggling to achieve the absolute minimum.

Australian Catholic University staff details were stolen in fresh data breach
The Age 
The Australian Catholic University has revealed the sensitive personal information of staff members has been stolen in a cyber attack, in the second significant security breach revealed in a month to have occurred at one of the country's tertiary institutions.

Australia joins a global project that uses AI against online child abuse
Open Gov
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has recently signed on to a pilot designed to reduce child sexual abuse material online.

One of Australia's big four banks hit with another sophisticated scam
Nine
The most recent scam, discovered by email security company MailGuard, has been sent from several different compromised accounts pretending to be NAB. Customers receive an email painstakingly formatted to look like official correspondence from the bank, with the body explaining the last BPAY payment has been put on hold.

China

Chinese police detain two for spreading 'false rumours' about Huawei
Reuters
Chinese police have detained two men and reprimanded another for spreading online rumours about telecommunications equipment manufacturer Huawei, state news agency Xinhua reported late on Thursday.

Delete Content Related to Hong Kong Protests
China Digital Times
Information about the protests has been tightly controlled within China, though searches for Hong Kong and related terms have been among the most popular on Weibo, according to FreeWeibo. The phrase “Let’s Go Hong Kong!” has been censored on the site. The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

New China Mobile 5G promotion video features surveillance & social control.

USA

U.S. chipmakers quietly lobby to ease Huawei ban
Reuters
@StephenNellis
Huawei’s American chip suppliers, including Qualcomm and Intel, are quietly pressing the U.S. government to ease its ban on sales to the Chinese tech giant, even as Huawei itself avoids typical government lobbying. Executives from top U.S. chipmakers Intel and Xilinx Inc attended a meeting in late May with the Commerce Department to discuss a response to Huawei’s placement on the black list.

Study finds that a GPS outage would cost $1 billion per day
ARS Technica
@SciGuySpace
One of the most comprehensive studies on the subject has assessed the value of this GPS technology to the US economy and examined what effect a 30-day outage would have.

Homeland Security has tested a working BlueKeep remote code execution exploit
Tech Crunch
@zackwhittaker
To date, most of the private exploits targeting BlueKeep would have triggered a denial-of-service condition, capable of knocking computers offline. But an exploit, able to remotely run code or malware on an affected computer — an event feared by government — could trigger a global incident similar to the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017.

Robocalls are overwhelming hospitals and patients, threatening a new kind of health crisis
Washington Post
Doctors, administrators and other hospital staff struggled to contain a much different kind of epidemic one April morning last year: a wave of thousands of robocalls that spread like a virus from one phone line to the next, disrupting communications for hours.

UK

Hague urges Britain to follow Australia on Huawei
SMH
@latikambourke
Former Tory leader William Hague says Britain should unite with its Five Eyes partners Australia and the United States in banning Huawei from its 5G rollout. Hague, a former foreign secretary, joins a growing chorus of top-tier Conservatives, including the former defence secretary Michael Fallon, who want the British government to align with Australia and the US.

Russia

Kremlin Warns of Cyberwar After Report of U.S. Hacking Into Russian Power Grid
The New York Times
@INechepurenko
The Kremlin warned on Monday that reported American hacking into Russia’s electric power grid could escalate into a cyberwar with the United States, but insisted that it was confident in the system’s ability to repel electronic attacks. Dmitri S. Peskov, President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, also raised concerns that President Trump was reportedly not informed about the effort, which was the subject of a New York Times report on Saturday that detailed an elaborate system of cybertools deployed by the United States inside Russia’s energy system and other targets.

Middle East

Iran says it dismantled a U.S. cyber espionage network
Reuters
Iran said on Monday it had exposed a large cyberespionage network it alleged was run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and that several U.S. spies had been arrested in different countries as the result of this action.

Misc

Blindfold Big Brother: We Need A Global Right To Privacy In Public Spaces
News Week 
@KenRoth
Does privacy depend on secrecy? The question seems obvious until you think about it. Yes, much of the privacy we value takes place away from prying eyes, but not all of it. We also depend on a degree of privacy even in public. But increasingly invasive digital surveillance combined with artificial intelligence has put that "public" privacy in jeopardy.

After Wave of Complaints, Instagram Tests New Methods to Recover Hacked Accounts
Vice
@josephfcox
Motherboard previously reported how hackers were holding high-profile Instagram accounts for ransom, and how some influencers had to turn to white-hat hackers for help.

New free decryption tool allows victims to unlock all versions of this ransomware
ZDNet
@dannyjpalmer
A new decryption tool that counters one of the most prolific families of ransomware by allowing victims to retrieve their files for free has been released in a collaborative effort by Europol, the FBI, cybersecurity company Bitdefender, and others.

What is ‘hybrid warfare’ and what is meant by the ‘grey zone’?
The Conversation
@SdBachman
The concepts of “hybrid warfare” and the “grey zone” arguably build on longstanding military strategies. What is relatively new is adversaries exploiting information technology vulnerabilities to achieve an outcome. While the concept is fairly new, its effects and outcomes are often in the headlines today.

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