Apple's proposal to build its first global flagship store in the Southern Hemisphere in Melbourne's Federation Square has been rejected by Heritage Victoria.

A cyber security and information warfare researcher from the University of New South Wales has issued an alarmist warning that the forthcoming Australian Federal Election will attract social media manipulation, nation-state attacks and a "swarm of advertising and messaging in platforms as diverse as Facebook and WeChat".

The FIN6 cyber crime group, that has in the past been involved in stealing payment card data, has allegedly expanded its activities to deploying Windows ransomware, the security firm FireEye claims.

Waves of DNS hijackings over the past three months, aimed at consumer-grade routers mostly from D-Link, have been diverting traffic from a number of well-known domains and directing them elsewhere.

The Australian Labor Party has questioned why 183,000 households who have fibre-to-the-node connections on the NBN cannot get even the minimum speeds of 25Mbps as of March.

Number two telco Optus has called for national reform to facilitate 5G deployment and urged industry and government collaboration to reassess what it calls “outdated” deployment rules.

A renewed focus on research and development was the only bright spot in the Budget reply speech made by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Thursday, the head of Australia's national start-up advocacy group says.

And of course, there's plenty more so for all the news visit www.itwire.com.

Have a great day!

Stan Beer, Editor, iTWire

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