Robo Debt: A Great Example of Government Using Technology

Australia's 'robo debt' scheme was found to be crude and cruel. It made many people feel like criminals, according to a royal commission. People who dipped into the system ended up with large crippling debts. The report recommended hundreds of people be considered for possible civil or criminal prosecutions.

Play episode from 19:31

chevron_right

Transcript

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

This week in InfoSec

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

13th July 2001: Code Red Worms its Way into the Internet

The Code Red worm is released onto the Internet. Targeting Microsoft’s IIS web server, Code Red had a significant effect on the Internet due to the speed and efficiency of its spread. Much of this was due to the fact that IIS was often enabled by default on many installations of Windows NT and Windows 2000. However, Code Red also affected many other systems with web servers, mostly by way of side-effect, exacerbating the overall impact of the worm, ensuring its place in history among the many malware outbreaks infecting Windows systems in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

10th July 1995: After writing the initial version of the yet-to-be-released SSH, Tatu Ylonen emailed a request to IANA for SSH to be assigned port 22, receiving approval/assignment mere hours later.

https://www.ssh.com/academy/ssh/port

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1281629953360982016

]

Rant of the Week

Australia's 'great example of government using technology' found to be 'crude and cruel'. And literally lethal to citizens

An Australian government initiative described by the then-minister in charge as "a great example of the Government using technology" has been described by a Royal Commission as "a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals."

The initiative came to be known as "Robodebt" – reflecting its automated matching of data sets and issuance of debt notices to welfare recipients.

But the algorithm Australia's government used to calculate the debts was based on massively and tragically incorrect assumptions.

Australians are eligible for welfare payments if their income dips below certain levels in a given two-week period. In the early 2010s, the government of the day decided to ensure that welfare recipients hadn't received more payments than they were due, with data sharing between welfare and tax agencies informing the process.

To assess whether proper payments had been made, the relevant department averaged recipients' income across a year.

Which was a huge mistake.

Billy Big Balls of the Week

Indian developer fired 90 percent of tech support team, outsourced the job to AI

Here's a story from the Department of Massive and Terrifying Irony: a startup Indian software developer struggled to afford its customer support team, so outsourced it – to an AI chatbot that was more efficient and cheaper.

The developer is called Dukaan and offers a platform it promises allows rapid deployment of online stores.

Founder Suumit Shah took to Twitter to reveal that the change to robo-service saw time to first response fall – from a minute and 44 seconds to zero. Resolution time plunged as well – from two hours and 13 minutes when humans were doing it, down to three minutes and 12 seconds with AI on the job. Overall customer support costs dropped by around 85 percent.

Shah detailed how Dukaan struggled to hire people with the skills to work as support agents.

"It's like – Lionel Messi doing a full time job at Decathlon, though the theory has some merit, but is ultimately flawed," he wrote.

It is that time of the show where we head to our news sources over at the Infosec PA newswire who have been very busy bringing us the latest and greatest security news from around the globe!

Industry News

Martin Lewis Shocked at Deepfake Investment Scam Ad

Central Bankers Develop Framework For Securing Digital Currencies

EU Adopts New US Data Privacy Agreement

Clop: Behind MOVEit Lies a Loud, Adaptable and Persistent Threat Group

Ethical Hackers Reveal How They Use Generative AI

Fewer Than 100 Scammers Responsible For Global Email Extortion

White House Publishes Plan to Implement US National Cybersecurity Strategy

Mandiant Unveils Russian GRU's Cyber Playbook Against Ukraine

New CVSS Version Unveiled Amid Rising Cyber Threats

Tweet of the Week