Jurisdiction

Judge bars NSO Group from using spyware to target WhatsApp in landmark ruling

A US federal judge has permanently barred NSO Group, a commercial spyware company, from targeting WhatsApp and, in the same ruling, cut damages owed to Meta from $168 million to $4 million.

The decision by Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the Northern District of California stems from NSO’s 2019 hack of WhatsApp, when the company’s Pegasus spyware targeted 1,400 users through a zero-click exploit. The injunction bans NSO from accessing or assisting access to WhatsApp’s systems, a restriction the firm previously warned could threaten its business model.

An NSO spokesperson said the order ‘will not apply to NSO’s customers, who will continue using the company’s technology to help protect public safety,’ but declined to clarify how that interpretation aligns with the court’s wording. By contrast, Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, stated on X that the decision ‘bans spyware maker NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp and our global users again.’

Pegasus has allegedly been used against journalists, activists, and dissidents worldwide. The ruling sets an important precedent for US companies whose platforms have been compromised by commercial surveillance firms.

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Innovation versus risk shapes Australia’s AI debate

Australia’s business leaders were urged to adopt AI now to stay competitive, despite the absence of hard rules, at the AI Leadership Summit in Brisbane. The National AI Centre unveiled revised voluntary guidelines, and Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton said a national AI plan will arrive later this year.

The guidance sets six priorities, from stress-testing and human oversight to clearer accountability, aiming to give boards practical guardrails. Speakers from NVIDIA, OpenAI, and legal and academic circles welcomed direction but pressed for certainty to unlock stalled investment.

Charlton said the plan will focus on economic opportunity, equitable access, and risk mitigation, noting some harms are already banned, including ‘nudify’ apps. He argued Australia will be poorer if it hesitates, and regulators must be ready to address new threats directly.

The debate centred on proportional regulation: too many rules could stifle innovation, said Clayton Utz partner Simon Newcomb, yet delays and ambiguity can also chill projects. A ‘gap analysis’ announced by Treasurer Jim Chalmers will map which risks existing laws already cover.

CyberCX’s Alastair MacGibbon warned that criminals are using AI to deliver sharper phishing attacks and flagged the return of erotic features in some chatbots as an oversight test. His message echoed across panels: move fast with governance, or risk ceding both competitiveness and safety.

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AWS outage turned a mundane DNS slip into global chaos

Cloudflare’s boss summed up the mood after Monday’s chaos, relieved his firm wasn’t to blame as outages rippled across more than 1,000 companies. Snapchat, Reddit, Roblox, Fortnite, banks, and government portals faltered together, exposing how much of the web leans on Amazon Web Services.

AWS is the backbone for a vast slice of the internet, renting compute, storage, and databases so firms avoid running their own stacks. However, a mundane Domain Name System error in its Northern Virginia region scrambled routing, leaving services online yet unreachable as traffic lost its map.

Engineers call it a classic failure mode: ‘It’s always DNS.’ Misconfigurations, maintenance slips, or server faults can cascade quickly across shared platforms. AWS says teams moved to mitigate, but the episode showed how a small mistake at scale becomes a global headache in minutes.

Experts warned of concentration risk: when one hyperscaler stumbles, many fall. Yet few true alternatives exist at AWS’s scale beyond Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, with smaller rivals from IBM to Alibaba, and fledgling European plays, far behind.

Calls for UK–EU cloud sovereignty are growing, but timelines and costs are steep. Monday’s outage is a reminder that resilience needs multi-region and multi-cloud designs, tested failovers, and clear incident comms, not just faith in a single provider.

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China leads the global generative AI adoption with 515 million users

In China, the use of generative AI has expanded unprecedentedly, reaching 515 million users in the first half of 2025.

The figure, released by the China Internet Network Information Centre, shows more than double the number recorded in December and represents an adoption rate of 36.5 per cent.

Such growth is driven by strong digital infrastructure and the state’s determination to make AI a central tool of national development.

The country’s ‘AI Plus’ strategy aims to integrate AI across all sectors of society and the economy. The majority of users rely on domestic platforms such as DeepSeek, Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Doubao, as access to leading Western models remains restricted.

Young and well-educated citizens dominate the user base, underlining the government’s success in promoting AI literacy among key demographics.

Microsoft’s recent research confirms that China has the world’s largest AI market, surpassing the US in total users. While the US adoption has remained steady, China’s domestic ecosystem continues to accelerate, fuelled by policy support and public enthusiasm for generative tools.

China also leads the world in AI-related intellectual property, with over 1.5 million patent applications accounting for nearly 39 per cent of the global total.

The rapid adoption of home-grown AI technologies reflects a strategic drive for technological self-reliance and positions China at the forefront of global digital transformation.

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Civil groups question independence of Irish privacy watchdog

More than 40 civil society organisations have asked the European Commission to investigate Ireland’s privacy regulator. Their letter questions whether the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) remains independent following the appointment of a former Meta lobbyist as Commissioner.

Niamh Sweeney, previously Facebook’s head of public policy for Ireland, became the DPC’s third commissioner in September. Her appointment has triggered concerns among digital rights groups that oversee compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

The letter calls for a formal work programme to ensure that data protection rules are enforced consistently and free from political or corporate influence. Civil society groups argue that effective oversight is essential to preserve citizens’ trust and uphold the GDPR’s credibility.

The DPC, headquartered in Dublin, supervises major tech firms such as Meta, Apple, and Google under the EU’s privacy regime. Critics have long accused it of being too lenient toward large companies operating in Ireland’s digital sector.

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Startup raises $9m to orchestrate Gulf digital infrastructure

Bilal Abu-Ghazaleh has launched 1001 AI, a London–Dubai startup building an AI-native operating system for critical MENA industries. The two-month-old firm raised $9m seed from CIV, General Catalyst and Lux Capital, with angels including Chris Ré, Amjad Masad and Amira Sajwani.

Target sectors include airports, ports, construction, and oil and gas, where 1001 AI sees billions in avoidable inefficiencies. Its engine ingests live operational data, models workflows and issues real-time directives, rerouting vehicles, reassigning crews and adjusting plans autonomously.

Abu-Ghazaleh brings scale-up experience from Hive AI and Scale AI, where he led GenAI operations and contributor networks. 1001 borrows a consulting-style rollout: embed with clients, co-develop the model, then standardise reusable patterns across similar operational flows.

Investors argue the Gulf is an ideal test bed given sovereign-backed AI ambitions and under-digitised, mission-critical infrastructure. Deena Shakir of Lux says the region is ripe for AI that optimises physical operations at scale, from flight turnarounds to cargo moves.

First deployments are slated for construction by year-end, with aviation and logistics to follow. The funding supports early pilots and hiring across engineering, operations and go-to-market, as 1001 aims to become the Gulf’s orchestration layer before expanding globally.

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SMEs underinsured as Canada’s cyber landscape shifts

Canada’s cyber insurance market is stabilising, with stronger underwriting, steadier loss trends, and more product choice, the Insurance Bureau of Canada says. But the threat landscape is accelerating as attackers weaponise AI, leaving many small and medium-sized enterprises exposed and underinsured.

Rapid market growth brought painful losses during the ransomware surge: from 2019 to 2023, combined loss ratios averaged about 155%, forcing tighter pricing and coverage. Insurers have recalibrated, yet rising AI-enabled phishing and deepfake impersonations are lifting complexity and potential severity.

Policy is catching up unevenly. Bill C-8 in Canada would revive critical-infrastructure cybersecurity standards, stronger oversight, and baseline rules for risk management and incident reporting. Public–private programmes signal progress but need sustained execution.

SMEs remain the pressure point. Low uptake means minor breaches can cost tens or hundreds of thousands, while severe incidents can be fatal. Underinsurance shifts shock to the wider economy, challenging insurers to balance affordability with long-term viability.

The Bureau urges practical resilience: clearer governance, employee training, incident playbooks, and fit-for-purpose cover. Education campaigns and free guidance aim to demystify coverage, boost readiness, and help SMEs recover faster when attacks hit, supporting a more durable digital economy.

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Public consultation flaws risk undermining Digital Fairness Act debate

As the European Commission’s public consultation on the Digital Fairness Act enters its final phase, growing criticism points to flaws in how citizen feedback is collected.

Critics say the survey’s structure favours those who support additional regulation while restricting opportunities for dissenting voices to explain their reasoning. The issue raises concerns over how such results may influence the forthcoming impact assessment.

The Call for Evidence and Public Consultation, hosted on the Have Your Say portal, allows only supporters of the Commission’s initiative to provide detailed responses. Those who oppose new regulation are reportedly limited to choosing a single option with no open field for justification.

Such an approach risks producing a partial view of European opinion rather than a balanced reflection of stakeholders’ perspectives.

Experts argue that this design contradicts the EU’s Better Regulation principles, which emphasise inclusivity and objectivity.

They urge the Commission to raise its methodological standards, ensuring surveys are neutral, questions are not loaded, and all respondents can present argument-based reasoning. Without these safeguards, consultations may become instruments of validation instead of genuine democratic participation.

Advocates for reform believe the Commission’s influence could set a positive precedent for the entire policy ecosystem. By promoting fairer consultation practices, the EU could encourage both public and private bodies to engage more transparently with Europe’s diverse digital community.

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Privacy laws block cross-border crypto regulation progress

Regulators continue to face hurdles in overseeing global crypto markets as privacy laws block effective cross-border data sharing, the Financial Stability Board warned. Sixteen years after Bitcoin’s launch, regulation remains inconsistent, with differing national approaches causing data gaps and fragmented oversight.

The FSB, under the Bank for International Settlements, said secrecy laws hinder authorities from monitoring risks and sharing information. Some jurisdictions block data sharing with foreign regulators, while others delay cooperation over privacy and reciprocity concerns.

According to the report, addressing these legal and institutional barriers is essential to improving cross-border collaboration and ensuring more effective global oversight of crypto markets.

However, the FSB noted that reliable data on digital assets remain scarce, as regulators rely heavily on incomplete or inconsistent sources from commercial data providers.

Despite the growing urgency to monitor financial stability risks, little progress has been made since similar concerns were raised nearly four years ago. The FSB has yet to outline concrete solutions for bridging the gap between data privacy protection and effective crypto regulation.

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Lehane backs OpenAI’s Australia presence as AI copyright debate heats up

OpenAI signalled a break with Australia’s tech lobby on copyright, with global affairs chief Chris Lehane telling SXSW Sydney the company’s models are ‘going to be in Australia, one way or the other’, regardless of reforms or data-mining exemptions.

Lehane framed two global approaches: US-style fair use that enables ‘frontier’ AI, versus a tighter, historical copyright that narrows scope, saying OpenAI will work under either regime. Asked if Australia risked losing datacentres without loser laws, he replied ‘No’.

Pressed on launching and monetising Sora 2 before copyright issues are settled, Lehane argued innovation precedes adaptation and said OpenAI aims to ‘benefit everyone’. The company paused videos featuring Martin Luther King Jr.’s likeness after family complaints.

Lehane described the US-China AI rivalry as a ‘very real competition’ over values, predicting that one ecosystem will become the default. He said US-led frontier models would reflect democratic norms, while China’s would ‘probably’ align with autocratic ones.

To sustain a ‘democratic lead’, Lehane said allies must add gigawatt-scale power capacity each week to build AI infrastructure. He called Australia uniquely positioned, citing high AI usage, a 30,000-strong developer base, fibre links to Asia, Five Eyes membership, and fast-growing renewables.

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