Asian Tech Roundup: Failure at Fujitsu

Plus, China cracks knuckles

Nissan Australia is notifying approximately 100,000 customers about a cyber attack last December. The attack impacted some form of personal information for everyone involved, and about 10% had "some form of government identification" - including Medicare cads, driver's licenses and passports - compromised. Source
An IT outage has affected McDonalds stores in Australia, China, Japan and the UK. The company has denied a cyberattack. Source

Communist Party members have gathered at the annual meeting in Beijing to discuss how to boost innovation. That included a 10% boost to the national budget for science and technology, to $51.6 billion. Source
China has warned that a US ban on TikTok would "come back to bite" the country. Source

Security researchers discovered a new data breach post from a threat actor called "NetSecOfficial," which involved data stolen from ecommerce giant Flipkart. Source
Google is restricting the use of its Gemini chatbot in the run-up to India's general election, putting limitations on the types of election-related questions it can answer. Source
Army Chief General Manoj Pande has talked about the possibility of incorporating AI into the Indian military at the NDTV Defence Summit. Source
The government has approved a $1.24 billion investment for the "IndiaAI" mission, a plan to set up an all-India AI ecosystem - from scratch. Most of the funds will go to building a new high-performance computing system with 10,000 "or more" GPUs. Source

Tech giant Fujitsu has reported a hack to Japan's data protection authority, the Personal Information Protection Commission. It has warned that the attackers may have stolen personal data and customer information. Source
The Japanese government is considering proposals to regulate AI system developers, to ensure they implement measures to address disinformation and other risks, say sources. Source

Singapore-based semiconductor startup Silicon Box is investing €3.2 billion in setting up chipmaking facilities in Italy as the EU seeks to double its chip production. Source

Samsung and SK Hynix are storing used chipmaking equipment rather than selling it to avoid possible US action for breaking sanctions against China and Russia. Source
Meanwhile, Samsung is to use technology championed by rival SK Hynix as it seeks to catch up in the AI chip race, insiders say. Source
Alibaba Group plans to invest $1.1 billion in South Korea over the next three years to build a logistics centre and expand businesses. It will spend $300 million this year alone, according to the Yonhap news agency. Source

A threat actor is allegedly selling "access" to an unnamed Indonesian energy sector giant. Source
The United States is planning to diversify semiconductor production by investing more in Thailand, said US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo. Source
A number of semiconductor firms have set up business in Malaysia to avoid the US-China trade war - from China, the USA, Japan, Korea and more. Source