FBI Probes 'Hundreds' Of China Spy Cases

Shane Harris at the Daily Beast offers a piece on the FBI investigating Chinese cyber espionage case.

The FBI has seen a surge in cases of economic espionage in the past year, and the bureau says that China is largely to blame.

China’s intelligence services are “as aggressive now as they’ve ever been,” said Assistant Director Randall Coleman, who runs the bureau’s counterintelligence division. He and other senior FBI officials described the threat China poses to U.S. companies during a rare, on-the-record briefing with reporters Thursday. It was an event meant to underscore the pervasive nature of intellectual-property and trade-secrets theft and to alert businesses to protect themselves.

“The predominant threat we face right now is from China,” Coleman said.

The FBI has linked the theft of a broad range of technologies—from seeds to software—to the Chinese government, he said. The number of cases investigated by the division, which is responsible for stopping and catching spies, has shot up 53 percent in the past year, Coleman said. The precise number of total cases is classified, but Coleman said it’s “in the hundreds.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/23/fbi-probes-hundreds-of-china-spy-cases.html

U.S. Employee Data Breach Tied To Chinese Intelligence

 

The Communist Chinese are tied to the computer hacking of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Newsweek reports.

 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Chinese hacking group suspected of stealing sensitive information about millions of current and former U.S. government employees has a different mission and organizational structure than the military hackers who have been accused of other U.S. data breaches, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

While the Chinese People's Liberation Army typically goes after defense and trade secrets, this hacking group has repeatedly accessed data that could be useful to Chinese counter-intelligence and internal stability, said two people close to the U.S. investigation. 

 

Washington has not publicly accused Beijing of orchestrating the data breach at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and China has dismissed as "irresponsible and unscientific" any suggestion that it was behind the attack.

          

Sources told Reuters that the hackers employed a rare tool to take remote control of computers, dubbed Sakula, that was also used in the data breach at U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc last year.

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

 

http://www.newsweek.com/us-employee-data-breach-tied-chinese-intelligence-344981 

Sex, Lies And Debt Potentially Exposed By U.S. Data Hack

A story in the Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the suspected Communist Chinese computer hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When a retired 51-year-old military man disclosed in a U.S. security clearance application that he had a 20-year affair with his former college roommate's wife, it was supposed to remain a secret between him and the government.

The disclosure last week that hackers had penetrated a database containing such intimate and possibly damaging facts about millions of government and private employees has shaken Washington.

The hacking of the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) could provide a treasure trove for foreign spies.

 

The military man's affair, divulged when he got a job with a defense contractor and applied to upgrade his clearance, is just one example of the extensive potential for disruption, embarrassment and even blackmail arising from the hacking.

    The man had kept the affair secret from his wife for two decades before disclosing it on the government's innocuously named Standard Form 86 (SF 86), filled out by millions of Americans seeking security clearances.

    His case is described in a judge's ruling, published on the Pentagon website, that he should keep his security clearance because he told the government about the affair. His name is not given in the administrative judge's decision.

The disclosure that OPM's data had been hacked sent shivers down the spines of current and former U.S. government officials as they realized their secrets about sex, drugs and money could be in the hands of a foreign government.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20150615_Reuters_Report_KBN0OV0CC_Sex__lies_and_debt_potentially_exposed_by_U_S__data_hack.html