In October 2018, US officials arrested the first-ever Chinese intelligence officer on accusations of hacking. While this worked for some time, now, US investigators are starting to catch one to the Chinese government's new modus operandi. "The suggestion was that if he didn't do that there would be negative ramifications for individuals at home," Hickey said. "The intimation was that they worked for the government and the request from that person was that the employee take a thumb drive and just put it in his computer at work. "This is a story related to me during one of my outreach events and it involved a Chinese national was an employee of an American firm who was approached by someone," said Adam Hickey, Deputy Assistant Attorney General. They operate on the ground, near targets, by recruiting company insiders, or even coercing Chinese employees to aide their hacking efforts using blackmail or threats against families living at home. If these contractors can't breach a target, intelligence officers assigned to specific cases come into action. These contractors can be known criminal hackers, security researchers, security firms, or regular IT professionals. Nowadays, China's hacking efforts follow a different pattern.Īccording to reports from varied sources, Chinese hacking operations are ordered by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, they're coordinated by intelligence officers assigned to specific areas of interest, who in turn hire private contractors in order to isolate and distance any intrusions from the Beijing government. These talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information."Ī nugget hidden in the article was the fact that China's hacking efforts don't involve a "cyber" division at one of its military units, like it used to be in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The US academic sector has also been heavily targeted, primarily due to its openness, its less regulated environment, but also due to its richness in advanced technologies and R&D work.įor example, just last month, the US charged the Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University for lying to US authorities about his participation in China's Thousand Talents Plan.Īccording to the DOJ: "China's Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China's scientific development, economic prosperity and national security. Investigations in the US academic sectorīut the theft of US IP and R&D hasn't been taking place in the business sector only. William Evanina, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, warns that many of these companies may end up not opening factories of production units in the future due to IP theft, all while Chinese companies will be getting help from the Beijing government via subsidies or other government programs.īeijing is bankrolling its companies into top market positions through government funds and allowing these companies to skirt all the downsides of having to deal with the lows of the global economy.įBI officials say they've been having meetings with US companies for the past year to warn them against the practices of the Chinese government and its state-controlled private sector firms. Lacking access to China's huge market many companies ignore the risks, cut corners in vetting their partners, and enter partnerships with Chinese firms.įBI officials said many companies don't see the damage their doing to themselves in the long run by handing over costly research & development (R&D) work to Chinese partners at much inferior prices, all for the promise of being able to do business in China. "And they make American joint ventures operating in China establish those Communist Party cells within their companies." "They often require our businesses to put their trade secrets and their customers' personal data at risk as the cost of gaining access to China's huge market," Wray said. Wray says that China is deliberately exploiting the weaknesses and the openness of the US academic environment and the openess of the US economy, while also using their closed system to block US companies from entering the Chinese market. Many times, the Chinese companies continue to use the technology even after partnerships end, ignoring copyrights and trademarks. Business partnerships that companies will regretįor example, entering into a business partnership is not illegal, but several of the US officials invited to speak at the conference said that partnerships with Chinese partners often involves a transfer of US technology.
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