News Story: Brunei's Sultan cautions army of cyber-related threats

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Brunei's armed force should be ready to deal with the cyber-related threats which prevailed in the digital age, said Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, Brunei's Sultan on Sunday.

Delivering a speech on the 56th Royal Brunei Armed Forces (RBAF) anniversary, the Sultan, who is also the country's minister of defense and supreme commander of RBAF, emphasized the importance for RBAF personnel to strengthen their respective internal fortress and adhere to the ethics of social media usage as part of the wider efforts to safeguard against radicalization and extremism.

Apart from this, the Sultan also raised the increasing prevalence of cyber-related threats in today's digital age and took note of the on-going efforts undertaken by the Ministry of Defense and the RBAF in enhancing Cyber Defense.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: U.S. imposes new Iran sanctions

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday it has imposed sanctions on 11 entities and individuals for supporting Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for cyber-attacks against the United States.

The sanctions targeted one entity engaging in supporting IRGC ballistic missile program, two Ukraine-based entities supporting designated airlines, and two Iran-based networks responsible for cyber-enabled attacks against the U.S. financial system, said the Treasury in a statement.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: China's development not a threat to other countries - FM spokesperson

BEIJING, July 27 (Xinhua) -- China adheres to an independent foreign policy of peace and is committed to peaceful and cooperative development, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said Thursday.

Lu made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo's comments.

According to reports, Pompeo branded China, Russia and Iran as major future threats to the United States, and singled out China as the most serious security challenge due to its "robust economy" and "growing military power." He also said that Chinese spies have been cyberspying to gain both commercial and military secrets and technology from the United States.

"In his logic, whoever poses the strongest economic and military power becomes the biggest threat to the world," Lu said.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Senior official stresses use of big data, AI in policing

GUIYANG, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official has called on the country's police force to make full use of big data technology and artificial intelligence (AI).

Meng Jianzhu, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks during a two-day inspection in southwest China's Guizhou Province, which concluded Wednesday.

Guizhou has been a pioneer of the application of big data technology in various sectors including police work.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Singapore launches new bill to fight against cyber attacks

SINGAPORE, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Singapore has launched a new bill on cyber security in a bid to set up a framework to reduce cyber risks of the country, the Straits Times reported on Tuesday.

According to the proposed Cyber Security Bill, when a cyber attack occurs, Singapore's Cyber Security Agency (CSA) will be empowered to carry out an investigation and the affected company or entity have to share related information with the CSA.

As the fruit of almost two years of work of the CSA, the bill aims to blur the line between cyber threats to the public sector and the private sector by plugging security gaps in critical information infrastructure (CII), such as those used to run banking, telecoms, transport, healthcare and energy essential services.

The bill will also confer power on CSA's chief as Commissioner of Cyber Security to investigate threats and incidents to ensure essential services are not disrupted in the event of a cyber attack.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: Australia Launches New Cyber Warfare Unit

Phil Mercer

SYDNEY — Australia has a new Information Warfare Unit that will start operations within days. It will defend Australian military targets from cyber attacks and will be able to launch its own assaults on foreign defense forces.

Australia’s newest frontline forces are ‘keyboard warriors’ - analysts, technicians and computer experts who will lead the fight against cyber attacks.

The unit will run both defensive and offensive operations. It will allow Australia to respond to modern digital forms of conflict, as the United States, China and Russia increase their investment in electronic warfare.

The Information Warfare Unit will have 100 staff members, but that figure is expected to grow to about 900 in a decade’s time.

AUS: Prime Minister, Minister for Defence and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security - Capability to fight cyber criminals

The Turnbull Government is committed to protecting Australians online and stopping cyber criminals.

Cybercrime is conservatively estimated to cost the Australian economy $1 billion a year.

Since its inception at the end of 2014, there have been over 114,000 reports of cybercrime registered with the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN).

Notably 23,700 of these have been reported over the last 6 months, highlighting a growing occurrence of cyber criminal activity.

Given the growing cost of cybercrime to the Australian economy, the Government has directed the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to use its offensive cyber capabilities to disrupt, degrade, deny and deter organised offshore cyber criminals. This follows the Government’s public acknowledgement of ASD’s offensive cyber capability when we launched Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy in April 2016.

The use of this capability, which is currently used to help target, disrupt and defeat terrorist organisations such as Daesh, is subject to stringent legal oversight and consistent with our obligations under international law.

News Report: Australia to Set Up Cyber Warfare Unit to Protect Country From Hacking Attacks

The Australian Defense Forces will create a cyber warfare unit, which will improve the country's defense against cyberattacks and enable it to launch own attacks, local media reported Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – One hundred personnel and public service employees will work for the unit, with this number expected to grow to 900 in ten years, the ABC broadcaster reported.

The unit will be tasked with defending Australian military targets from cyberattacks, identifying foreign targets and launching own attacks. The targets could reportedly include China's South Sea Fleet.

The news come against the background of recent worldwide cyberattacks, with such malicious software as WannaCry and ExPetr affecting work of computers in companies and state agencies in many countries.

Australian authorities reportedly also fear alleged cyberthreat coming from Russia, as Washington repeatedly accused Moscow of meddling with US presidential election with the help of hackers, which Kremlin refuted as groundless.

This story first appeared on Sputnik & is reposted here with permission.

News Story: Australian gov't announces new offensive cyber warfare division

CANBERRA, June 30 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government has announced that a new cyber warfare division with offensive capabilities will go online from July 1 to ensure the country remains at the "cutting edge" of the cyber security landscape.

Making the announcement in Canberra on Friday, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security Dan Tehan said the new Information Warfare Division would conduct both offensive and defensive cyber attacks, in a move he said was necessary due to the changing nature of modern warfare.

"From tomorrow, Australia will have an Information Warfare Division within the Defence Department," Tehan told the press.

"This is a result of the changing character of contemporary conflict. The division will have the responsibility for military cyber operations, military intelligence, joint electronic warfare, information operations and our military's space operations.

"It will integrate existing operations across our forces to protect and support our Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel and systems, and the division is authorized to conduct self-defence, passive defence, active defence and offensive operations."

The minister said Australia's defence personnel were among the best in the world, and that under the new cyber warfare division, they would be able to stay "ahead of the curve" to keep Australians, businesses and governments safe from cyber attacks.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Asia-Pacific countries call for concerted efforts to address rising non-traditional threats to security

SINGAPORE, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Non-traditional threats to security in the Asia-Pacific region had taken the center stage of the 16th Shangri-La Dialogue which concluded here on Sunday, with participants calling for concerted efforts to address them.

At the three-day dialogue which opened on Friday evening, defense ministers, officials and experts from Asia-Pacific countries shared the same view that terror threat is on the rise and spreading, members of extremist groups are sneaking into the region and large-scale cyber attacks are nothing new.

TERROR THREAT ON RISE AND SPREADING IN ASIA-PACIFIC

As Europe has become a frequent target of terror attacks in recent years, a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific have also fallen victim, including Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Afghanistan.

The car bomb explosion targeting government buildings and foreign embassies in central Kabul on May 31 left at least 90 people dead and 400 others injured.

The deadly attack targeting the convoy of Pakistani Senate's Deputy Chairman Molana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri in southwestern province of Balochistan killed at least 25 and inured 35 others on May 12.

These incidents have underscored the severity of terrorism in the region. It also tells that no country in the region can assume it will be spared from terror attacks.

In a plenary speech at the security forum on Sunday, Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said: "Closer to home, terrorism is our biggest security concern in Southeast Asia" and the threat in the region has heightened, including for Singapore, and is likely to worsen.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: Hackers Who Leaked Tools For Global CyberAttack Set To Sell Secret Code

A hacker group that took credit for leaking some of the NSA cyber tools used in last week’s ransomware attack that hit systems more than 150 countries has announced that they will soon begin selling code that can help hack into some of the world’s most critical and ubiquitous technology.

In an online statement, the Shadow Brokers group said that beginning in June, they will release software to access secret spying tools, which would give anyone willing to pay the ability to break into phone handsets, network routers and web browsers on some of the most popular consumer devices. 

The hackers said that they would also be selling zero-days, secret vulnerabilities that could be used to break into Windows 10. Without revealing many details, the group said there may in addition be a dump of data from nuclear and missile programs in Iran, China, North Korea and Russia.

They also will supply data from international banks that use the SWIFT international money transfer network. 

As researchers investigate the source of the attack, there is some indication that North Korea may have been involved. 

News Story: India hit by ransomware virus

NEW DELHI, May 13 (Xinhua) -- A massive cyber attack that has struck organizations in dozens of countries across the world since Friday evening, has hit India too.

Indian officials said Saturday that the global WannaCry ransomware cyber attack has affected about 25 percent of the computers - more than 100 in number - used by the police in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

"The 25 percent of police computers infected with the ransomware were mostly using the Windows operating system. Cyber experts were trying to debug the hacked computers," Inspector General of Andhra Pradesh Police E. Damodarm told the media.

Gulshan Rai, director general of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, has also confirmed the attack.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Manhunt for hackers behind global cyberattack

By Robin MILLARD

International investigators hunted Saturday for those behind an unprecedented cyber-attack that affected systems in dozens of countries, including at banks, hospitals and government agencies, as security experts sought to contain the fallout.

The assault, which began Friday and was being described as the biggest-ever cyber ransom attack, struck state agencies and major companies around the world -- from Russian banks and British hospitals to FedEx and European car factories.

"The recent attack is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits," said Europol, Europe's police agency.

Europol said a special task force at its European Cybercrime Centre was "specially designed to assist in such investigations and will play an important role in supporting the investigation".

The attacks used ransomware that apparently exploited a security flaw in Microsoft operating systems, locking users' files unless they pay the attackers a designated sum in the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Read the full story at SpaceDaily

News Story: China, Australia pledge to further deepen bilateral relations

SYDNEY, April 22 (Xinhua) -- China and Australia have pledged here to further deepen bilateral relations between the two countries.

While meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Friday, Meng Jianzhu, head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said that China and Australia have scored great achievements in developing bilateral ties, with leaders of the two countries exchanging successful visits and reaching important consensus on developing the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two sides.

As two major countries in the Asia-Pacific, China and Australia have common interests in many aspects and the prospects for future cooperation between the two countries are promising, Meng said.

Meng said as bilateral economic and trade ties are growing stronger and personnel exchanges between the two sides become more frequent, it is necessary for the two countries to establish a high-level security dialogue mechanism so as to lift the level of bilateral security cooperation.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: China Hails US Readiness to Cooperate on ‘One Belt, One Road’ Strategy

China welcomes US participation in cooperation within the "One Belt, One Road" strategy, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the visit of leader Xi Jinping to the United States.

BEIJING (Sputnik) – US President Donald Trump met with Xi Jinping in Florida on April 6-7.

In a Saturday statement, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Xi welcomed US willingness to participate in cooperation within the "One Belt, One Road" strategy.

Xi also said that opportunities for Beijing-Washington economic and trade cooperation are broadening and China also plans to strengthen cooperation with the US in the law enforcement sphere, as well as in the fight against money laundering, drug trafficking and cybercrime.

The Chinese leader also stressed the importance of Chinese-US military ties, saying that the two sides should maintain the exchanges between their armed forces at all levels.

China's "One Belt, One Road" strategy was launched in 2013 and is aimed at developing infrastructure and strengthening ties between the Eurasian countries, focusing on the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road.

In October 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) could partner up with the Silk Road Economic Belt.

This story first appeared on Sputnik & is reposted here with permission.

News Report: FBI Investigating North Korean Involvement in Digital Robbery of Bangladesh Bank

The FBI is eyeing North Korea on suspicion of stealing $81 million from the central bank account of Bangladesh at the New York Federal Reserve, according to US media, possibly with the assistance of middlemen from China.

Federal prosecutors are reportedly preparing charges against Pyongyang. The digital theft constitutes one of the biggest heists in history. 

On Tuesday, Bangladeshi Bank Chief Atiur Rahman resigned his position at the request of Finance Minister Abdul Maal Abdul Muhith. Muhith said later that he wasn’t even aware the robbery had taken place until it appeared in newspapers a month later.

He told reporters at the time that "Bangladesh Bank had the audacity not to inform me. I am certainly going to take action against it."