Intelligence vs. the quick buck? Why else do nothing to risk disclosing your presence for so many years?
Previously Undiscovered Team of State-Sponsored Chinese Hackers, Has Been Quietly Committing Cyber Espionage in the APAC Region for a Decade
A new advanced persistent threat (APT) group linked to China has been discovered by SentinelLabs, but only after conducting cyber espionage campaigns under the radar since 2013. The Chinese hackers have been given the name “Aoqin Dragon,” appear to specialize in targeting the Asia Pacific region and likes to lure victims with malicious documents that appear to be salacious ads for pornography sites.
The cyber espionage group is thought to have been in action since at least 2013, with a heavy focus on certain APAC countries and regions: Australia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam. The group also focuses in on government agencies, educational institutions and telecommunications firms, and appears to target individuals involved in political affairs.
A 15 minute video...
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000008314175/china-government-surveillance-data.html
China’s Surveillance State Is Growing Bigger and More Invasive. These Documents Reveal How.
A Times investigation analyzing over 100,000 government bidding documents found that China’s ambition to collect digital and biological data from its citizens is more expansive and invasive than previously known.
(Related) Every government sees value in surveillance.
https://threatpost.com/kazakh-govt-used-spyware-against-protesters/180016/
Kazakh Govt. Used Spyware Against Protesters
An agent of the Kazakhstan government has been using enterprise-grade spyware against domestic targets, according to Lookout research published last week.
The government entity used brand impersonation to trick victims into downloading the malware, dubbed “Hermit.” Hermit is an advanced, modular program developed by RCS Lab, a notorious Italian company that specializes in digital surveillance. It has the power to do all kinds of spying on a target’s phone – not just collect data, but also record and make calls.
Answering the obvious questions.
https://hbr.org/2022/06/building-transparency-into-ai-projects
Building Transparency into AI Projects
As algorithms and AIs become ever more embedded in people’s lives, there’s also a growing demand for transparency around when an AI is used and what it’s being used for. That means communicating why an AI solution was chosen, how it was designed and developed, on what grounds it was deployed, how it’s monitored and updated, and the conditions under which it may be retired. There are four specific effects of building in transparency: 1) it decreases the risk of error and misuse, 2) it distributes responsibility, 3) it enables internal and external oversight, and 4) it expresses respect for people. Transparency is not an all-or-nothing proposition, however. Companies need to find the right balance with regards to how transparent to be with which stakeholders.
Applications for surveillance? Your iPhone as an AI-phone.
Today I learned you can identify plants and flowers using just your iPhone camera
No app required — just take a picture
… It works very simply. Just open up a photo or screenshot in the Photos app and look for the blue “i” icon underneath. If it has a little sparkly ring around it, then iOS has found something in the photo it can identify using machine learning. Tap the icon, then click “Look Up” and it’ll try and dredge up some useful information.
It doesn’t just work for plants and flowers, either, but for landmarks, art, pets, and “other objects.” It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s surprised me more times than it’s let me down.
(Related)
Beyond images: Air Force official on AI quest for ‘integrated’ intel picture
… The service has been working on automated target recognition (ATR) for a while, but “only as of late has the processing power of the systems that we were using really caught up to the aspirations of what we wanted to do with it,” Winston Beauchamp, Air Force deputy chief information officer, said in a June 15 interview.
“So back when we started the ATR journey, we were talking about hundreds of largely still images, largely black and white, coming in from overhead systems or airborne systems,” he said. “Now, we’re talking about thousands and we’re talking about full motion video and multispectral, in some cases hyperspectral [images], coming from a variety of platforms that are government and commercial. All of these have to be somehow processed and, ideally, find some way to stitch them together into an integrated picture.”
Intelligence is now gathered by “hobbyists” over the Internet.
https://spacenews.com/explosion-at-chinese-space-launch-center-revealed-by-satellite-imagery/
Explosion at Chinese space launch center revealed by satellite imagery
An explosion severely damaged rocket facilities at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in October 2021, commercial satellite imagery shows.
Jiuquan spaceport is situated in the Gobi Desert and hosts major orbital launches including all of the country’s Shenzhou human spaceflight missions. Established in 1958 it is the first of China’s four national spaceports to be constructed.
Evidence of the explosion was discovered by space enthusiast Harry Stranger using imagery from Airbus and CNES and posted on Twitter June 10.
Perspective.
https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2022/06/20/the-future-of-education
The future of education
WILL PERSONALISED learning replace teachers? Host Tom Standage travels to the year 2042 to find children being taught by personalised learning assistants powered by artificial intelligence, and funded by corporate advertising. What does this mean for schools? Back in the present, Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, and Mark Johnson, The Economist’s education correspondent, debate how technology will change education, and the merits of the “flipped classroom”. Runtime: 23 min
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