ASIA IN BRIEF Chinese company Zhipu last week launched a new AI model called GLM-5.3 that it claims has bug-finding powers that match those possessed by American models. The company\u2019s announcement includes benchmark data that finds GLM-5.3 beats Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on the CyberGym benchmark, a test of a model\u2019s ability to solve real-world cybersecurity challenges. \u201cAs we scaled post-training, cyber capability developed faster than we expected. GLM-5.3 is state of the art on CyberGym for vulnerability discovery, and its gains are largest further up the exploitation chain,\u201d the company wrote, adding that the model \u201cdid not simply become better at identifying isolated flaws: it began to reason across multiple stages of exploitation, forming coherent plans for complete exploitation chains.\u201d The company said it has worked with Chinese companies to test the model on real-world codebases, and found 2,436 vulnerabilities across 269 projects, including 1,097 medium-to-high severity issues. The findings span system kernels, operating systems, browser engines, open-source infrastructure, web applications, and network protocols. \u201cMany had remained unnoticed for years or even decades, with the oldest dating back roughly 40 years,\u201d the announcement states. GLM-5.3 also performed worse than western models on other security and coding benchmarks. Yet the fact that the model is a highly-capable bug finder signals that China is not far behind in terms of being able to poke holes in its rivals software and developed that capability very quickly after the debut of Anthropic\u2019s Mythos. Any advantage the US felt it had as the home of Anthropic has therefore dissipated. Korea signals legal action against Apple, Google app store strangleholds South Korea\u2019s Communications Commission last week found Google and Apple had abused their app store monopolies, and promised stern sanctions will follow. In 2021, South Korea passed world-first legislation requiring app store operators to offer the option to use third-party payment schemes. Apple and Google did so, but charged a 26 percent transaction fee for doing so \u2013 meaning they earned almost as much revenue when users chose third-party payment providers as they did from their own schemes. The regulator has previously warned that it will impose the highest possible penalty available under law, which is three percent of revenue earned by non-compliant behaviour. That\u2019s probably back-of-the-sofa money for Apple and Google. India has banned rideshare operators from offering customers the chance to specify the amount they will tip before a driver accepts a gig. Uber India introduced the feature last year, seemingly copying it from an Indian rideshare operator called Namma Yatri. Consumer affairs minister Pralhad Joshi criticized Uber for the practice at the time, as he saw it as a means for users to effectively jump the queue by offering drivers more money \u2013 and for rideshare platforms to improve their revenue because if tips are higher, so is the platform\u2019s share of the gratuity. Last week, India\u2019s Ministry of Road Transport & Highways issued a directive (PDF) banning the practice. Henceforth, rideshare apps can only offer users the chance to tip at the end of a journey, and all of the tip must go to the driver. \u201cNo feature, prompt, message, add-on, payment option, or user interface element should be displayed before completion of the ride that directly or indirectly encourages, induces, or creates an impression that payment of any additional amount may improve ride confirmation, driver acceptance, driver allocation, waiting time, or quality of service,\u201d the directive states. Indian services giants reveal data breaches Indian tech services giants TCS and HCL last week both admitted to data breaches but say customer data is safe, and only employee data is at risk. TCS published a stock exchange filing that opens \u201cThis is to inform you that Company has received threat-intelligence alerts alleging possible exposure of certain employee information.\u201d The filing says TCS investigated the matter \u201cand has not found any credible evidence of a breach of TCS systems or customer environments.\u201d The company says leaked info is \u201cbasic employee information\u201d and more than four years old. Note that mention of the stolen data being at least for years old, because TCS\u2019s filing says the attacker claims to have used password spray and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) fatigue to pull off the heist. TCS says it \u201chad strong safeguards in place against such techniques for more than two years,\u201d perhaps suggesting the data heist occurred before the company shored up its defenses. \u201cBased on the current review, these controls remain effective, and the Company continues to monitor the environment closely,\u201d the filing states. HCL also used a stock exchange filing [PDF] to address what it called \u201cclaims made by a hacker group of potential exposure of limited data elements relating to HCLTech employees.\u201d The company described the stolen data as \u201climited and dated to a few years back,\u201d and added its assurance that customer data is safe. HCL\u2019s investigation is ongoing. Lenovo\u2019s enterprise unit finally posts a big profit Lenovo last week announced its quarterly results, including a $777 million profit for its Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) \u2013 the biz based on the 2014 acquisition of IBM\u2019s x86 server operation that has seldom produced positive financials. Even during the early years of the AI boom, ISG\u2019s profits were modest \u2013 just a few million dollars per quarter on turnover of billions. The business unit won a record $8.5 billion of revenue, up 98 percent year-on-year. AI was a big reason for the result, as buyers sought hardware to run inferencing workloads, The company says it has a pipeline for $54 billion of AI server sales, and has become the number two x86 server vendor as measured by revenue. Overall revenue came in at $26.95 billion, up 43 percent year-on-year, and cash won by its PC-led intelligent devices group jumped 27 percent to $17.1 billion and saw its PC market share reach 24.2 percent. Lenovo reckons the strength of its supply chain helped make those outcomes possible. India to build astronaut training facility India\u2019s Space Research Organization (ISRO) last week issued a tender for construction of an astronaut training facility. The tender mentions extensive air conditioning works, plus a swimming pool, suggesting India wants to build a large tank in which the Vyomanauts who will fly its future Gaganyaan missions can train at home, instead of traveling to Russia or elsewhere as has been the case in the past. The tender covers $2.75 million worth of work. \u00ae<\/p>\n