The United States and Australia have signed an agreement that will enable the two allies to conduct research and development to advance their combined cyber capabilities, officials said Tuesday.

Nowhere "is the need for innovation more critical than in cyber, which continues to be a pervasive threat to our militaries and to our businesses," Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne said at a US-Australian summit in California.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the two countries had signed a memorandum of understanding "to deepen cybersecurity cooperation."

The move comes amid ongoing hacking thefts of sensitive information from military networks, and Russia's continued attempts to subvert democracy in America and elsewhere.

On a separate topic, an Australian reporter asked Mattis whether he thought the Australian navy should conduct a so-called "freedom of navigation" operation to challenge Chinese claims of sovereignty on militarized islets in the South China Sea.

The longstanding issue poses a dilemma for Canberra, with Australian lawmakers debating how much the country should align itself with its longstanding ally America, or pay more heed to the desires of China, its biggest trade partner.

"As far as freedom of navigation decisions by Australia, that's a sovereign decision by a sovereign state," Mattis said.

"We'll just leave that decision with the people of Australia, which is exactly where it belongs."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop also attended the annual summit.

Pompeo was asked about US views of holding Russia to account over its role in the 2014 shootdown of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 over Ukraine, when 298 people, including 38 Australian citizens and residents, were killed.

"We need the Russians to continue to be held accountable for that," Pompeo said.

"We take this matter seriously and we committed over these last two days, as we have for the last months, to continue to support every effort through the Joint Investigative Team to hold the perpetrators for this heinous activity accountable."

Twitter curbs access for 143,000 apps in new crackdown
Washington (AFP) July 24, 2018 - Twitter said Tuesday it had removed more than 143,000 apps from the messaging service since April in a fresh crackdown on "malicious" activity from automated accounts.

The San Francisco-based social network said it was tightening access to its application programming interfaces (APIs) that allows developers to make automated Twitter posts.

"We're committed to providing access to our platform to developers whose products and services make Twitter a better place," said Twitter senior product management director Rob Johnson.

"However, recognizing the challenges facing Twitter and the public -- from spam and malicious automation to surveillance and invasions of privacy -- we're taking additional steps to ensure that our developer platform works in service of the overall health of conversation on Twitter."

Johnson offered no details on the revoked apps, but Twitter has been under pressure over automated accounts or "bots" which spread misinformation or falsely amplify a person or political cause.

"We do not tolerate the use of our APIs to produce spam, manipulate conversations, or invade the privacy of people using Twitter," he said.

"We're continuing to invest in building out improved tools and processes to help us stop malicious apps faster and more efficiently."

As of Tuesday, any developer seeking access to create a Twitter app will have to go through a new application process, providing details of how they will use the service.

"We're committed to supporting all developers who want to build high-quality, policy-compliant experiences using our developer platform and APIs, while reducing the impact of bad actors on our service," Johnson said.

Automated accounts are not always malicious -- some are designed to tweet our emergency alerts, art exhibits or the release of a Netflix program -- but "bots" have been blamed for spreading hoaxes and misinformation in a bid to manipulate public opinion.

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