Cyber Security

Last week the Australian government successfully passed contentious national security legislation granting security and law enforcement agencies greater access to the encrypted messages of suspected criminals. The Telecommunications and Other Legislation (Assistance and Access) Bill is part of a

Much of the reaction to Malcolm Turnbull’s press conference last Friday has cast his comments as the latest, and possibly worst example of political technological illiteracy. And just another instance of anti-technology bluster and rhetoric without any firm policy foundation. Based on the level

For all the unique and strange precedents set by this election, few could have foreseen that a new stage in cyber conflict would be one of them. In the lead-up to election day in the US, officials are scrambling to signpost that any cyber attack that affects the election could result in

Another day sees yet another announcement of a major cyber breach at a government agency, this time unfortunately on Australian soil at the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). While specific information about the attack has not been revealed, it bears all the hallmarks of Chinese cyber methods and harks

Fergus Hanson is author of Internet Wars: The Struggle for Power in the 21st Century. This is the final installment in a series. Part 1 examined economic cyber espionage; part 2 cyber war; and part 3 citizen activism  Internet mythology suggests the online world is the sort of free market paradise

Fergus Hanson is author of Internet Wars: The Struggle for Power in the 21st Century. This post is part of a series that will also examine citizen activism and control of economic chokepoints. It was only mid-2009 when the US Secretary of Defense ordered the establishment of a dedicated Cyber

By Cheng Lim and Jack Maher. Cheng Lim leads the cyber security initiative at King & Wood Mallesons. Last year Jack Maher completed a Master of Chinese Law at Tsinghua University while working in the firm's Bejing office. China's internet czar Lu Wei, President Xi Jinping and Facebook Chief

The Asia Pacific is the most dynamic digital landscape in the world, home to the fastest adopters of new technologies and the largest concentration of mobile and social media users. An escalation in online activism, changing cyber dynamics, developments in digital diplomacy and the exploitation of

Back in April, Fergus Hanson highlighted the glaring need for a global response to ISIS in the cyber domain, and welcomed the announcement of an $18 million initiative to counter extremist propaganda online from the Australian Government. Last month Defence Minister Kevin Andrews announced the

'It's not that laws aren't relevant' said MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte during the 1990s, 'it's that the nation-state is not relevant...The internet cannot be regulated.'   Negroponte's assessment has not aged well, but to be fair, he was not alone in his belief. Digital activist

There's an 'Uber for X', goes the little ditty, celebrating the ubiquitous infiltration of the online 'sharing economy.' It seems Uber's business model can be turned to virtually all our needs, and a global ecosystem of app buttons has popped up on our smartphones. As in so many things, however,

Over the past month, The Interpreter has hosted a debate on Australian defence strategy initiated by Alan Dupont's Lowy analysis paper, Full-Spectrum Defence. The discussion so far has only glanced tangentially off the most brutal of the realities affecting defence strategy: the perpetually

It has been almost two months since The Interview was released online, but it is due to hit Australian cinemas tomorrow. The critical consensus seems to be that the film is juvenile and mildly funny, a poor if necessary choice for the defence of artistic expression, but also possibly somewhat

As several participants in our debate have argued, nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) can have a positive effect on strategic stability in Asia and globally. But they do not exist in a vacuum. New military capabilities, and strategies that take advantage of them, are being developed and

Don't believe anything you read on the cyber espionage spat between US and China. Depending on who's talking, the US is a 'thief crying stop thief' and a 'mincing rascal'; or China's 'scale of commercial hacking is immense', perhaps the 'greatest transfer of wealth in history'. After attending

Revelations about mass intelligence gathering by the US and its allies serve the useful purpose of highlighting the need for, and proper role of, intelligence oversight in democracies. This essay provides a conceptual overview of some of the ideal types of democratic intelligence oversight.

It's 7:15am and you're in a conference room, the same room you sit in every working morning. At the head of the table sits the head of your country's domestic security service. Pick a country, any country. Into that room walks a group of analysts and field investigators, and they lay a new problem

America's military science lab DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is now spending $110 million 'to allow those with little or no hacking experience to engage in cyberwarfare', reports the technology website CNET. The goal is to help US military commanders launch cyber attacks '

This is part 2 of my email interview with Peter Singer, co-author of a new book called Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know (link takes you to the book's official website, which includes discussion questions and even a song list). Part 1 of the interview is here. SR: Having