Asian Tech Roundup: CISO questioned after India’s Star Health hack

Plus: TSMC’s rapid revenue rises

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at investigations into a major hack at India’s Star Health, Chinese hackers compromising US ISPs, and TSMC’s rapid revenue rise

China

• OpenAI says a Chinese group called SweetSpecter, tried to phish its staff to deploy a remote access Trojan. Source
• Chinese hackers may have broken into major US broadband networks including Verizon and AT&T to snoop on web traffic. Source
• China’s Tencent is reported to be in talks to acquire Ubisoft, the French video games company that has hit financial difficulties since lowering revenue projections for the delayed game Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Source
• China Mobile has released a tool called "Xinhe" that facilitates the porting of code written for Nvidia ecosystems to Huawei. Source
• TikTok has released new automated advertising features, apparently in a bid to compete with Meta and Google. Source
• Rong Luo, CFO of search engine Baidu will move to lead its mobile unit, with the unit's current head, Junjie He, becoming interim CFO. Source
• Chinese “spamoflage” networks have been observed targeting the US with antisemitic messages. Source

India

• Star Health is investigating whether its CISO played a role in a recent hack that leaked customers' medical records and personal data. Source
• Striking workers at a Samsung factory in Tamil Nadu have rejected an offer made by the company on wages and union recognition. Source
• Indian authorities investigating a theft of $235 million from cryptocurrency exchange WazirX in July, have received server and laptop logs, transaction trails, and the blockchain addresses linked to the hacking from WazirX. Source
• RS Sharma, non-executive chairman of the Open Networks for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has laid out his vision for Indian AI as being scalable, democratic and frugal. Source
• The AI Fund, created by founder and CEO of DeepLearning Andrew Ng, has invested in an Indian AI healthcare firm Jivi. Source
• Infosys has announced an expanded partnership with Microsoft to expand the use of AI and Microsoft Azure around the world. Source
• Ola Electric is under investigation by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) after thousands of customer complaints about its electric vehicles. Source
• India is a leading market for mobile AI apps, accounting for 21% of the global downloads in 2024. Source
• India plans to open a platform called “IndiaAI Datasets Platform" to host open source datasets by January 2025. Source

Japan

• Fujitsu and Supermicro are to combine forces to develop to develop a platform designed for high-performance and energy efficiency, as well as liquid-cooled systems for HPC, Gen AI and green datacentres. Source
• Japan’s JT-60SA nuclear fusion tokamak has achieved a record volume of contained plasma of 160 cubic meters . Source

Taiwan

• TSMC’s revenues rose 36.5% year-on-year to T$759.69 billion ($23.62 billion) on the back of strong AI demand. Source
• TSMC and Samsung have discussed building new production facilities in the United Arab Emirates. Source
• PCB manufacturer APCB has is to close its Taiwanese facility and transfer production to its Chinese operations. Source
• Taiwan’s Foxconn says it is building the world's largest manufacturing facility for bundling Nvidia's GB200 superchips in Mexico. Source

Other Asia

• Google has said that if New Zealand’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, which it refers to as a “link tax” as it would require Google to pay for linking to news articles, goes ahead, it might be "forced to stop linking to news content on Google Search, Google News” or Discover surfaces” in the country. Source
• OpenAI plans to open an office in Singapore, as well as new facilities in the US Paris and Brussels as it expands its global footprint. Source
• An international summit in South Korea sought to establish a framework for the responsible military use of AI, an area that has been excluded from all agreements so far. Source
• X tried to convince an Australian judge that it did not have to demonstrate measures designed to tackle child sexual abuse material because those demands were directed at Twitter, which no longer exists under that name. The judge was having none of it. Source