Kina

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/tiktok-insiders-say-chinese-parent-bytedance-in-control.html

Former TikTok employees say there is cause for concern when it comes to the popular social media app’s Chinese parent company.

They say ByteDance has access to TikTok’s American user data and is closely involved in the Los Angeles company’s decision-making and product development. 

Some cybersecurity experts worry that the Chinese government could use TikTok to spread propaganda or censorship to American audience, or to exercise influence over users who may come to regret what they posted on the service.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-privacy-censorship.html

To stay on the good side of the Chinese authorities, the company has made decisions that contradict its carefully curated image.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/06/01/exclusive-alibabas-huge-browser-business-is-recording-millions-of-android-and-iphone-users-private-web-habits/

on both Android and iOS versions of UC Browser, every website a user visits, regardless of whether they’re in incognito mode or not, is sent to servers owned by UCWeb.

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2021/05/19/a-hard-bargain-for-apple-in-china/

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/at-least-30000-u-s-organizations-newly-hacked-via-holes-in-microsofts-email-software/

At least 30,000 organizations across the United States — including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments — have over the past few days been hacked by an unusually aggressive Chinese cyber espionage unit that’s focused on stealing email from victim organizations, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. The espionage group is exploiting four newly-discovered flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server email software, and has seeded hundreds of thousands of victim organizations worldwide with tools that give the attackers total, remote control over affected systems.

By all accounts, rooting out these intruders is going to require an unprecedented and urgent nationwide clean-up effort. Adair and others say they’re worried that the longer it takes for victims to remove the backdoors, the more likely it is that the intruders will follow up by installing additional backdoors, and perhaps broadening the attack to include other portions of the victim’s network infrastructure.

KrebsOnSecurity has seen portions of a victim list compiled by running such a tool, and it is not a pretty picture. The backdoor web shell is verifiably present on the networks of thousands of U.S. organizations, including banks, credit unions, non-profits, telecommunications providers, public utilities and police, fire and rescue units.

“It’s police departments, hospitals, tons of city and state governments and credit unions,” said one source who’s working closely with federal officials on the matter. “Just about everyone who’s running self-hosted Outlook Web Access and wasn’t patched as of a few days ago got hit with a zero-day attack.”

https://digitstodollars.com/2021/03/05/youre-on-allocation/

The current shortage is driven by two things: Covid and manufacturing is hard. Last year, factories in China started shutting down early in the year. By the time they started re-opening later in the year, factories everywhere else had shut down, or at least drastically scaled back. So many Chinese factories did not scale production up in a hurry. The result was reduced output everywhere. Then early this year it became clear that pandemic was under control in China and vaccines were coming soon everywhere, and that demand for many electronic devices was stronger than ever. Companies across the supply chain suddenly had to race to catch up, but often found their suppliers were not back to producing at full scale. This caused wrinkles to spread across the industry. Finally, it appears now that shipping has become a bottleneck with air freight prices sky high (pun intended) and US ports still dealing with scaled back working conditions. You could probably also throw in the US-China Trade War, but let’s not go down that particular rabbit hole now, just chalk it up to further complicating the situation.

The best example of this, and one we commonly hear, is the proverbial $2 electric motor which prevents completion of a $50,000 car. Now multiply this by 10,000 companies all hindered in their ability to ship because of some shortage from someone else’s factory.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-zoom-employee-chinese-government-shut-down-tiananmen-square-commemorations

A China-based Zoom executive was charged with coordinating with the Chinese government to shut down Zoom meetings in the United States and elsewhere on a host of religious and political topics, including the commemoration of the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/08/huawei-tested-ai-software-that-could-recognize-uighur-minorities-alert-police-report-says/

The Chinese tech giant Huawei has tested facial recognition software that could send automated “Uighur alarms” to government authorities when its camera systems identify members of the oppressed minority group, according to an internal document that provides further details about China’s artificial-intelligence surveillance regime.

https://nrkbeta.no/2020/09/15/over-700-nordmenn-kartlagt-av-kinesisk-selskap/

Et selskap med angivelige koblinger til kinesiske myndigheter har samlet informasjon om flere millioner mennesker verden over. NRK har fått tilgang til den norske databasen, som inneholder over 700 navn. Databasen avslører hvilke personer i Norge som er av interesse for kinesiske aktører, sier ekspert.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/cheap-chinese-smartphones-malware

Preinstalled malware on low-cost Chinese phones has stolen data and money from some of the world’s poorest people.

Current security concerns about Chinese apps and hardware have largely focused on potential back doors in Huawei’s 5G equipment. More recently, people have focused on how user data collected by TikTok could be abused by the company and the Chinese government. But an overlooked and ongoing threat is the consistent presence of malware on cheap smartphones from Chinese manufacturers and how it exacts a digital tax on people with low incomes.