Asian Tech Roundup: Australia arrests Ghost head

Plus: Vietnamese president to meet Big Tech chiefs on US visit

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at the arrest of a 32-year-old man in Sydney as part of an international operation against organised crime, Vietnam president To Lam’s visit to the US, and a change at the top for Amazon India.

Australia

• Australia's IT spending is set to rise by 8.7% in 2025 as a result of Windows 10 EOL and cybersecurity requirements. Source
• The police have arrested a 32-year-old manin Sydney, charging him with five offences relating to running a messaging app, Ghost, used by organised crime syndicates. Source

China

• It can be hard to know exactly when the Chinese government starts blocking web-based services, but GFWeb, a measurement platform capable of testing hundreds of millions of domains, has pinpointed the date when ChatGPT went dark: 2nd March 2023. Source
• A US federal court in Georgia has charged a Chinese national, Song Wu, 39, with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in alleged attempts to steal code and data from NASA, Source
• Alibaba and Indonesia's digital ecosystem providers GoTo Group announced a partnership to expand digital services in Indonesia. Source
• The UK's National Cyber Security Centre and its allies in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance have exposed a China-based firm operating a massive botnet network. Source
• At a global summit on military AI, China refused to sign agreement on AI control of nuclear weapons . Source

India

• Samir Kumar is to replace Manish Tiwary as head of Amazon’s Indian consumer business, after the latter quit suddenly last month. Source
• Small businesses will soon be able to operate their own wireless hotspots without requiring a licence from a telecoms company. Source
• About 1,500 workers at Samsung’s factory in Chennai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, are on strike over working conditions and wages. Source
• Razorpay has launched a no-code data integration platform called DataSync; the first payment aggregator to have done so. Source
• The state-run Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has committed INR 6 billion ($71.7 million) for its digital transformation journey. Source
• Seven Indian firms - Infosys, AI4Bharat (IIT Madras), IIT Jodhpur, KissanAI, People+AI, Sarvam AI and Wadhwani AI – have joined the international AI Alliance, which aims to promote safe and responsible AI practices. Source
• China’s Lenovo will start producing AI servers at its plant in Puducherry, southern India. It plans to manufacture 50,000 rack servers and 2,400 GPUs every year. Source
• The Tata Group is working with Analog Devices to explore the possibilities of manufacturing semiconductors in India. Source

Japan

• The US and Japan are reported to be close to a deal to restrict technology exports to China, despite Japanese fears of retaliatory measures from China. Source
• Lunar transportation start-up ispace is racing to become the first private firm in Asia to land a probe on the moon. It plans to launch in December and attempt a landing in April or May next year. Source
• Self-driving start-up Tier IV plans to challenge existing players by releasing free autonomous software. Source

Vietnam

• Vietnam’s president To Lam is to meet with tech company leaders including from Meta and Google when he visits the US next week. Source
• US officials and companies have been lobbying Vietnam to avoid using Chinese suppliers for its planned undersea internet cables. Source

Other Asia

• South Korea has scrapped more than 1,300 CCTV cameras from its military barracks after it found they were made in China, and had security issues, rather than domestically. Source
• Alibaba Cloud’s SIN11 Digital Realty datacentre in Singapore is still not operational, more than a week after a fire at the building. Alibaba is waiting for the equipment to dry out before it restores services and customer data. Source
• North Korean espionage group UNC2970 has been targeting employees at aerospace and energy companies and installing the MISTPEN backdoor on their devices. Source