China's cyber czar replaced by deputy

The powerful head of China's cybersecurity and internet censorship agency has stepped aside in favor of his deputy, according to a brief announcement by the state news agency.

The powerful head of China’s cybersecurity and internet censorship agency has stepped aside in favor of his deputy, according to a brief announcement by the state news agency.

The six-sentence bulletin from Xinhua said that Lu Wei, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, was being replaced by his deputy Xu Lin. It gave no reason why, and the implications of the change remain unclear.

The bulletin said there would be ‘a further assignment’ for Lu, who will apparently remain a deputy chief at the Communist Party’s Central Publicity Department. Lu has headed the CAC since Chinese President Xi Jinping set it up in 2014.

The shake-up was first reported by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The paper said Xu was considered a protege and close ally of President Xi, having worked with him when he was Shanghai party boss a decade ago.

The New York Times attempts to read the tea leaves on the implications of Lu’s departure, concluding ‘it was not clear whether his departure from the Cyberspace Administration was a demotion.’

The Times notes that Lu was a flamboyant figure by the muted standards of China’s Communist bureaucrats and ruffled feathers with his outspoken defense of Beijing’s right to censor the internet, get access to source code and impose other onerous burdens on foreign technology companies operating in the country.

‘So confrontational was he with some foreign technology companies that they complained to top government officials, like Vice Premier Wang Yang, about his heavy hand,’ the Times reports, citing an anonymous business consultant.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure