Defence & Security|

Cyber Security

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Digital authoritarianism not just a China problem

According to 2019 data from the World Trade Organisation, China is the largest global supplier of telecommunications equipment (generating US$296 billion compared to US$169 billion for the whole of the European Union) as well as office and telecom equipment (US$633 billion compared to US$363 billion

By Ausma Bernot

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Disinfopreneurs and infodemics

The use of social media in influence campaigns, including grey-zone activities and hybrid warfare, is becoming more complicated, more diverse, more profitable and more dangerous. This is being led, in part, by the privatisation and industrialisation of “weaponised information”. Referred to

By Damien Spry

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A zero-trust approach to cyber security

Amid the steady deterioration of the US–China relationship in recent years, China has become the focus of a new narrative on cyber risks, with one company targeted in particular, China’s champion of 5G technology, Huawei. Australia was the first country to ban Huawei from a 5G rollout, in 2018

By David Morris

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Indonesia responds to the cyber dark side

The “DarkSide” ransomware cyber-attack on the US-based gasoline facility Colonial Pipeline, which has disrupted East Coast fuel supplies and invoked emergency legislation, has once again highlighted the vulnerability of a nation’s critical infrastructure to malicious cyber activity. In

By Greta Nabbs-Keller, RM Wibawanto Nugroho Widodo

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Digital Authoritarianism, China and COVID

The coronavirus has showcased China's cyber-powered socialcontrol capabilities, with implications for human rights worldwide

By Lydia Khalil

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China and the Rules‑Based Order

Seven experts debate China’s approach to the rules‑based international order

By Ben Scott, Nadège Rolland, John Culver, David Kelly

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Don’t panic — Xi doesn’t hold all the aces in the great game of trade

Originally published in The Sunday Times

By Richard McGregor

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How to fight China's cyber-warriors

We must persuade Beijing that it should do it as it would be done by in cyber space. Rules are much better than retaliation. Originally published in the Australian Financial Review.

By Ben Scott

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Responding to cyber attacks: resilience and transparency is key

Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week revealed that Australia’s major political parties were the target of a recent cyber attack. The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) identified a malicious intrusion in the Parliament House computer network. It was later discovered that the Liberal, Labor

By Dirk van Graver

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Disruptors disrupted: Australia’s new encryption law

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

By Dirk van Graver

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A regional focus on cyber security

The digital revolution is fundamentally a story of prosperity, of growth through disruptive business models, the opening of new markets, and of sustainable and inclusive development enabled by digital technologies. But these benefits are not guaranteed. We must work collectively – domestically,

By Tobias Feakin

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Why Australia might be on the right encryption-cracking track

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

By David Wells

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Democracies take up arms against cyberattacks

As the Trump Administration starts ticking off targets for its first 100 days, the fallout from the Russian influence operation on the US presidential election is still working its way around the world. Multiple Western countries (mostly in Europe but also Australia) are grappling with how

By Brendan Thomas-Noone

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How the US election is setting cyber-security precedents

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

By Brendan Thomas-Noone

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Digital Asia links: Bangladesh internet drills, HK elections, Tencent HQ & more

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

By Danielle Cave

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Cybersphere is the globe's new battlefront

Originally published in The Australian

By Alan Dupont

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Digital Asia links: WeChat & the UN, Xiaomi, North Korea, a Cyber Minister and more

By Danielle Cave

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Australia needs calibrated deterrence against cyber attacks

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

By Ben FitzGerald

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China's puzzling defence agreement with Australia

Last Thursday, The Australian newspaper ran an editorial, 'Strengthening links with China'. This followed its front-page coverage of the visit to Canberra by China's Chief of General Staff Fang Fenghui, for annual talks with Chief of Defence Force Mark Binskin and Department of Defence Secretary

By Euan Graham

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If it looks and acts like an oligopoly ... the power of Facebook and other online elite

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

By Fergus Hanson

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Digital Asia links: Cross-Strait trolling, Modi & Silicon Valley, WhatsApp government and more

By Danielle Cave

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Waging war in peacetime: Cyber attacks and international norms

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 Fergus Hanson

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'The greatest transfer of wealth in history': Meeting the threat of economic cyber espionage

Fergus Hanson is author of Internet Wars: The Struggle for Power in the 21st Century. This post on economic cyber espionage (parts of which were also included in an article for the Brookings Institution) is part of a series that will also examine citizen activism, control of economic chokepoints,

By Fergus Hanson

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China lays down the cyber law: Play in our space, play by our rules

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

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Xi in America: China's poor grasp of public diplomacy on full display

Having a Catholic Pope and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China descend on Washington at almost exactly the same time helped illustrate something important about diplomacy. When staging a high-level state visit, there is a simple choice: emphasise either the head or the heart. This

By Kerry Brown

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Digital Asia links: Battle of the US State visits Â President Xi Jinping vs. Prime Minister Modi

By Danielle Cave

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Open-source intelligence links: Soldiers on Instagram, Russian submarines, Chinese drones, Syria and more

Thanks to advances in digital technologies, open-source intelligence (OSINT) is playing an increasingly important role in the mix of intelligence collected by state and non-state actors. Now and then The Interpreter will publish OSINT links instead of the weekly Digital Asia links to capture the

By Danielle Cave

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To effectively counter ISIS online, we need a narrative

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

By John Gooding

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Digital Asia links: Instagram influencers, Hacking Team, encrypted FireChat, clickbait nationalism and more

By Danielle Cave

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Liberalism, China and the internet

'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

By Brendan Thomas-Noone

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Digital Asia links: PLA on cyber sovereignty, Japan's Twitter culture, Pakistan tech and more

By Danielle Cave

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China's dangerous cyberwar strategy

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,

By Julian Snelder

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Countering ISIS online

When you look at the global response to the threat of ISIS, a glaring gap is the cyber domain. The internet has been critical to the terrorist group's success. It allows it to communicate unfiltered to the rest of the world, for onward mass dissemination by the media. It helps the group radicalise

By Fergus Hanson

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Will space and cyber operations affect ADF force structure?

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

By Derek Woolner

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Quick comment: Rory Medcalf on Australia's security challenges

This week’s Quick Comment podcast is with the new head of ANU’s National Security College and Lowy Institute Nonresident Fellow, Professor Rory Medcalf, who last night delivered a speech in which he argued that Australia needs to rethink how it approaches and considers national security and

By John Gooding

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Full spectrum defence: Re-thinking the fundamentals of Australian defence strategy

In this Analysis, Alan Dupont argues that successive Australian governments have failed to define an effective national defence strategy. Australia needs a defence strategy that counters threats across multiple domains, is based on more diverse regional defence relationships, and is underpinned by

By Alan Dupont

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North Korea's emerging cyber capabilities

The cyber attack on Sony Pictures by North Korea in response to the film The Interview (which opens in Australian cinemas today; see my review) came after a series of North Korean hacks of institutions in South Korea. It appears North Korea is improving its cyber capabilities and widening its target

By Robert E Kelly

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Australians can now go see 'The Interview', but they probably shouldn't

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

By Robert E Kelly

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The dark side of a fully wired world

The dark side of a fully wired world Alan Dupont The Australian 7 February 2015 Please click here for the online text

By Alan Dupont

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Cyberwar and war in space: Making SSBNs more dangerous

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

By Brendan Thomas-Noone

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Data sovereignty: Up in the clouds

The surprise recent decision of the European Court of Justice to make Google responsible for removing search result information demonstrates the ambiguous sovereignty of online data. In recent years there has been a trend toward de-territorialisation of business and government operations, storing

By Philippa Nicole Barr

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Cyber espionage and US-China relations: The world's biggest candy store

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

By Julian Snelder

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US indictment of Chinese hackers: No way out

On 19 May, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted five officers of People's Liberation Army (PLA) on charges of hacking the computers of six US entities to benefit China's state-owned enterprises. This marked the first 'criminal charges against known state actors for hacking,' according to

By Mihoko Matsubara

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Democratic oversight of intelligence agencies: A primer

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.

By Paul G Buchanan

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The silence of the lambs: The public service, leaks, and whistleblowing in Australia

It is little wonder that it was an Australian, Julian Assange, who set up the world's first secrecy leaking website, WikiLeaks. And it should be equally unsurprising that the world's greatest whistleblower is a US citizen, Edward Snowden. The terms whistleblower and leaker are mistakenly used

By Andrew Fowler

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Snowden and the struggle for new cyber-surveillance rules

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

By Philip Mudd

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Australia needs a cyber white paper

The idea of cyberspace as a common global good has yet to find its place in Australia. Ensuring that sea lanes remain open for navigation throughout the Indo-Pacific was a prominent concern in the last Defence White Paper. Australia's condemnation of the Chinese ADIZ in November 2013 indicates

By Brendan Thomas-Noone

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Dumbing down cyberwar: Is the US military ready for simpler cyberweapons?

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 '

By Frank Smith

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Interview: Peter Singer on cybersecurity and cyberwar, part 3

This is part 3 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 is here and part 2 is here. SR: Is

By Sam Roggeveen

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Interview: Peter Singer on cybersecurity and cyberwar, part 2

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

By Sam Roggeveen

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