16 MAY

Border storm

The opening of the new US embassy in the contested city of Jerusalem on Monday has brought simultaneous cheers and jeers from different quarters. President Donald Trump delivered a message via video-link to the ceremony that was attended by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The opening coincided with the 70th anniversary of Israel's independence and was hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "glorious day". 

The move makes good on a controversial Trump campaign promise to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City, which is also claimed by Palestinians. Critics, including Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have accused the United States of taking sides in the ongoing conflict. 

Roughly 25km from the embassy, Palestinian protesters were fired upon by Israeli security forces at the border. At least 60 were killed and thousands more injured, making it the bloodiest single day for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza conflict.

NEWS WRAP

Tortured process

• Prospective CIA director Gina Haspel has admitted torture should not have been used on Al Qaeda detainees after the September 11 attacks. Haspel has faced heavy criticism during the Senate confirmation process for her role in the CIA's infamous "black site" interrogation prisons. In a letter to Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, Haspel stopped short of condemning the practices used on the sites, but wrote "with the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the C.I.A. should have undertaken". The US Senate will likely vote on her nomination tomorrow. READ MORE HERE.
   

• Dallas evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress who once said Jewish people are going to hell, and megachurch televangelist Rev. John C. Hagee, who claimed that Hitler was part of God’s plan to return Jews to Israel, both played prominent roles on Monday in the opening ceremony of the new American embassy in Jerusalem. Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tweeted the same day that Jeffress was a "religious bigot". The Israeli government apparently had no objection to the role of Jeffress and Hagee at the embassy opening. READ MORE HERE.
   

• North Korea has suspended talks with South Korea in protest of joint South Korea-US military exercises. North Korea also warned the United States to "undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit". The US State Department insists that their preparations for the summit have not changed. Research fellow Brendan Thomas-Noone spoke to Nine News about the unlikely prospect of total complete nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula. READ MORE HERE.
   

• President Trump has pledged to help Chinese phone company ZTE get back into business in the United States. The president tweeted that the company "buys a big percentage of individual parts from US companies", and hinted that the concession was part of a broader trade deal with China. US trade officials will meet with their Chinese counterparts in Washington this week. READ MORE HERE.
   
• First lady Melania Trump has undergone surgery to treat a benign kidney condition. The procedure, known as an embolisation, blocks blood flow to a certain part of the kidney, likely to a benign growth to stop potential bleeding. The White House issued a statement saying the procedure went off without a hitch and President Trump tweeted to say that the first lady is recovering well. READ MORE HERE.
   
• James Comey's A Higher Loyalty stands apart from other recent commentaries on the Trump administration, writes USSC fellow Stephen Loosley. In his review of the controversial memoir, Loosley writes that the former FBI director's account is "told in a way that is convincing in its understated humility and devastating in its revelations". READ MORE HERE.
   

• While long-term interest rates in the United States continue to rise, reflecting expectations for stronger economic growth and higher inflation, Australia’s long-term interest rates have languished – and are below those in the United States by the largest margin since the early 1980s. The Centre's Trade and Investment Program director, Stephen Kirchner, took a look at the Reserve Bank of Australia's "explicit trade-off between inflation and financial stability concerns" and the effect on Australians’ wages for The Conversation today. READ MORE HERE.

The situation is certainly horrific, and I think that symbolically this move represents for many Palestinians the end of their hopes for a two-state solution.

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley
(CNN interview on US embassy in Jerusalem)
14 May 2018

ANALYSIS

Ransomware-y: Does a cyber holdup in Atlanta signal trouble for Australia?

Andrew Herrmann
Innovation & Entrepreneurship Program

On March 22 Atlanta, Georgia was under siege. But as its citizens set about their morning, no fighter jets screamed overhead and no armoured vehicles poured through the streets. The only indication anything was amiss was a tweet from the city government, informing Atlanta’s 470,000 citizens of "outages on various customer facing applications". This seemingly innocuous statement did little to capture the severity of the city’s predicament.

As municipal employees logged into their computers, some noticed peculiarities on their desktops: icons replaced with black boxes, and file extensions reading ‘imsorry’ and ‘weapologize’. Utilising a form of ransomware known as ‘SamSam’, an unidentified group of hackers had gained access to the city network, encrypted various files and demanded around US$51,000 for the keys to lifting the encryption.

These encryptions plunged swathes of the 8,000-employee municipal government into a technological dark age, leaving employees recording their hours on punch cards, police handwriting reports, and citizens unable to pay bills online. Almost two months on, the air of disruption lingers with municipal courts relying on entirely non-digital systems, the water department website indefinitely offline, countless files irrevocably lost and the city's 2019 budget process delayed.

Atlanta has spent at least US$2.7 million responding to what The New York Times labelled “one of the most sustained and consequential cyberattacks ever mounted against a major American city”. However, the United States is no stranger to ransomware attacks in which hackers lock a system’s files and demand payment for their release. In 2018, hackers using ‘SamSam’ or similar software attacked an Indiana hospital, Baltimore’s 911-dispatch system, and the Colorado Department of Transport. In 2017, the ‘WannaCry’ and ‘Petya’ mass attacks earned ransomware global notoriety.

In Australia, only a handful of companies fell victim to WannaCry or Petya. However, Telstra’s 2018 Security Report found almost 20 per cent of surveyed Australian businesses – mostly organisations of 500+ employees – were subject to at least monthly ransomware attacks. The federal government estimates such attacks cost the national economy in excess of AU$1 billion annually.

While the private sector bears the brunt of these attacks, what is the risk of such profit-seeking targeted attacks on governments in Australia? Two factors can perhaps provide insight: vulnerabilities and hackers’ incentives.

Regarding incentives, the Atlanta city government did not pay a ransom. This means the hackers drew considerable law enforcement and media attention, but no financial reward. In Australia, the federal government recommends ransomware victims do not pay, although almost 50 per cent of private sector victims reportedly did so in 2017.

Regarding vulnerabilities, an audit at least six months before the Atlanta attack warned of preventable ‘critical vulnerabilities’ in government IT systems, which the city failed to expeditiously rectify.

In Australia, state governments seem to be more alert. Since the federal Cyber Security Strategy launched in 2016, five states have released complementary strategies, updated their IT policies, or appointed officers overseeing all-of-government digital security. In addition to the recently announced national Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), ‘Joint Cyber Security Centres’ have also opened (or imminently will) in Australia’s five largest capitals. However, critics have questioned the adequacy of investment in such initiatives, and a March audit found the NSW state government ill-prepared.

So, how likely is an Atlanta-style attack here? Ultimately, assuring immunity to cyber-attack is impossible. No matter how many disincentives are created or vulnerabilities patched, there’s only one way for the state governments to know whether they are truly ready for a ransomware attack – and that’s if they learn that they weren’t.

DIARY

The week ahead

• Wednesday, 16 May: Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Cambridge Analytica.
   

• Wednesday, 16 May: President Donald Trump meets with the president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
   

• Thursday, 17 May: President Donald Trump meets with NATO's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg.
   

• Thursday, 17 May: US House intelligence committee hearing on China's military.
   

• Thursday, 17 May: Likely Senate confirmation vote on Gina Haspel, President Trump's nomination for CIA director.

EVENT

The future of work in Australia and the United States

VIDEO

Trump thanks his mother and mothers across the United States

THE WEEK IN TWEETS

#Israel

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University of Sydney NSW 2006

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