Daily Briefing for 09.08.25

Top stories.

1. Undersea cable cuts disrupt Internet in Asia and the Middle East.
2. Chinese hackers impersonated US lawmaker amid trade negotiations.
3. European Commission fines Google $3.5 billion for antitrust violations.

Undersea cable cuts disrupt Internet in Asia and the Middle East.

Reuters reports that Internet access was disrupted across parts of Asia and the Middle East after subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea. Internet monitoring firm Netblocks said in a Mastodon post that the incident affected the "SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia." Netblocks observed degraded connectivity across India, Pakistan, and the UAE. Separately, Microsoft said in an update that internet traffic traveling through the Middle East "may experience increased latency due to undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea."

It's unclear who or what was responsible for the cuts. CNBC notes that Yemen has accused the Houthis of targeting subsea cables in the past, but the Houthis have denied these allegations.

Chinese hackers impersonated US lawmaker amid trade negotiations.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese hackers impersonated a US lawmaker to target US individuals and entities during trade talks with China in July. The hackers posed as China committee chair Rep. John Moolenaar and sent malicious attachments to "trade groups, law firms, and US government agencies." The attachments delivered malware associated with the China-linked threat actor APT41.

The operation was likely meant to gather inside information related to trade negotiations. It's unclear if any of the targeted entities were breached.

European Commission fines Google $3.5 billion for antitrust violations.

The European Commission has fined Google €2.95 billion (US$3.5 billion) for its alleged anticompetitive advertising practices. The Commission says Google violated the EU's antitrust laws by:

• "Favouring its own ad exchange AdX in the ad selection process run by its dominant publisher ad server DFP by, for example, informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction.
• "Favouring its ad exchange AdX in the way its ad buying tools Google Ads and DV360 place bids on ad exchanges. For example, Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX, thus making it the most attractive ad exchange."

The Commission has ordered Google to end these practices and come up with "measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the adtech supply chain." Reuters notes that US President Trump called the fine "discriminatory," saying he would "start a Section 301 proceeding to nullify the unfair penalties being charged to these Taxpaying American Companies."