US authorities name five Chinese military hackers wanted for espionage The US Department of Justice has named five members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army that, it claims, carried out an eight-year hacking campaign against some American companies to steal commercially sensitive information. "These represent the first ever charges against known state actors for infiltrating U.S. commercial …
"This 21st century burglary has to stop," said David Hickton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
His statement was released the same day that this story broke.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/05/19/data-pirates-caribbean-nsa-recording-every-cell-phone-call-bahamas/
The USA. Our surveillance is authorized by Congress (Mostly). Yours isn't, so it's illegal.
The difference between China's and US' spying is purpose.
China steals TECH. It steals and copies technology. For instance, it's solar power and wind power industries are entirely built on stolen tech -- and any company complaining about it, gets locked out of China and its country suffers sanctions until it STFU.
Western spying is about state security, partly because China and Russia don't have any tech to steal, but mainly because the links between corporations and state are weaker, and patent legislation stronger.
It would appear the US is starting to get a bit tired of having it's tech stolen. Prosecuting a bunch of red army hackers is pointless, they'll never be allowed to leave China anyway, but it might be a prelude to import customs or sanctions against China.
"Western spying is about state security"
Yes, so they say. But given that US officials have lied about their spying activities and ever perjured themselves in sworn public testimony, should we believe them when they say it's only about "national security"? Who owns the US government, after all? It's sure not "we the people".
Didn't France look at suing the countries who run Echelon back in 2000 accusing them of using it for financial gain, mainly to do with the awarding of some aircraft manufacturing contracts.
Hardly sounds like it was national security.
Anyway what do you define as national security? Semantically I am pretty sure I could argue making the country number 1 economically is absolutely vital to the security of the country.
@Vociferous: give me a break there are numerous example where the US spied on western europeans allies to favour their own industry (military, telco, etc) at the expense of their "allies". Here, it seems they get a bit upset because they are up against someone better than them.
I really don't think the Chinese are better at industrial espionage, but they are accused of being a bit wholesale in their approach. I have nothing but respect for the US capability in that field, but I don't think they include it in their normal business plans.
The Chinese government has an admirable appetite for technical knowledge and the dissemination of such around their industries and universities; apparantly the some people think they are using some illegal methds of data gathering alongside their normal methods.
<snip>
"Western spying is about state security, partly because China and Russia don't have any tech to steal, but mainly because the links between corporations and state are weaker, and patent legislation stronger."
<snip>
Actually that is no longer true although it was generally the case. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and communism in general a lot of these agencies had to reinvent themselves pretty sharpish so they could retain staff and budgets. Their eyes were focused on business when Al Quaeda snuck under the radar and shouted boo. Since then they have refocused on whatever threat is deemed as being the cash generator 'de jour' but do not think that their economic desks are not live and kicking.
China and Russia have a plethora of tech to steal, but it is not always about tech!
China sec directly steals for China corporations, so its more guerilla economic warfare, while US security is more like a reality distortion field, intended to make profits evaporate globally and condense on Wall St. China is playing the Wall St game, listing its incredibly profitable bona fide companies like Alibaba, and not listing its dirty companies like Qunlei. But these valuations are nothing compared to what the ruling families (Red Dukes) can steal from the economy , kleptocracy rulez.
Some estimate that the top 1% of the communist party has stolen half the money in China, so both sides want this gig to continue.
The effects are slightly more asymmetric.
NSA employees not allowed visas to visit China - big fat meh
Employees of Chinese companies with government links (ie all of them) not allowed US visas, so difficultto visit South American countries or Canada.
US citizens not allowed to do business with these companies, US companies not allowed to do business with companies that do business with these companies etc etc.
"US citizens not allowed to do business with these companies, US companies not allowed to do business with companies that do business with these companies etc etc."
And US companies lose global business to Chinese, Indian and European competitors, US companies have to increasingly rely on domestic sales, US companies implode, world moves on.
Not good for anyone, but particularly bad for the ordinary American.
What if David Snowden has a list of every NSA employee covering the last 30 years?
When the U.S. wants to arrest a non-us citizen, like that guy from North Korea (see KrebsOnSecurity,) the U.S. enticed him to travel to Guam because the U.S. has an extradition treaty with Guam. What if other countries start playing by the U.S.'s rules?
Dig faster, boys, they're catching us...
The USA is saying that it spies on other nations for security purposes - What is <insert nation> nuclear arsenal, what are <insert nation> plans about <insert issue>, does <insert company> have ties with <insert person or nation>, etc.
The USA claims it does not steal company secrets to give US companies an economic edge, which is what the Chinese do. I guess the USA leaves stealing trade secrets to their sweater vest wearing thugs in the GCHQ
Most spies aren't the spies most people imagine spies to be. They are CAD draftsmen or scientists or engineers or visiting scholars or businessmen. You would, I suspect, be surprised at how many of those people get deported from countries all the time.
Visas expire because the project they were working on loses funding or they get misidentified as the perpetrator of a violent, but not deadly, crime. Previously undiscovered errors on visa applications suddenly come to light or they are implicated in misdeeds on the soil of an allied nation.
It doesn't really matter how they dress it up. Normal people are in one place today, gone to another place the next, because they are believed to be spies or patsies for spies.
There are rarely any repercussions, except an equal number of spies from your country will suffer one of the symptoms listed above and be sent home. Weapons tech will get people in real trouble, but if it's just good old fashioned industrial espionage everybody does their little dance and ship out the same number of different spies to the place that just booted them out.
Spying is a game all countries participate in. It's all quite formalized and (boringly) extremely not-Bond like.The prize for catching a spy is nothing, if you don't want to hand out prizes when your spies get caught (which is guaranteed to happen). In extreme cases, spying results in modifications to trade agreements and lowered interest rates from State sponsored banks. The Snowden case was fairly extreme, but now the trade arrangements have been made and it's all over. Situation normal, all fucked up.
The US has every right to be aggrieved, but it does not have the right to impose its laws on the rest of us.
Had those Chinese individuals done their deeds within the US, they would undoubtedly be found guilty and duly tried. If China were a civilised state, those people would be found guilty in China and duly prosecuted.
But the US and China are not at peace, though nor are they fully at war. International law, in its old sense of what is right and proper between self-governing polities, therefore is undefined.There is no case for the US pretending it can extradite in this matter.
> There is no case for the US pretending it can extradite in this matter.
The US doesn't think it can extradite those responsible. Every time the US would point the finger at the Chinese for hacking US companies the Chinese government would say "prove it". So the US publicly provided the facts to see what the Chinese leadership would do, as well as tying juicy steaks (to attract blood thirsty journalists) around the necks of five, now famous, people. Its all just a small move in the big game of politics.
Any country that has trade agreements with the US gives the US the right to request extradition of any citizen of that nation to stand trial for, alleged, crimes committed against the US or its interests. The only exception to that is if the other party has a 100% nobody gets extradited anywhere, for any reason policy. China is not an exception, they signed off on the deal, the US can request the extradition of Chinese Citizens.
But a really cool part of being a country is that you get to pick and choose how aggressively you want to pursue those obligations. Overall, this is nothing more than diplomacy at work. The US is naming names to show they've slipped inside China's defenses. None of it really means anything. Serious diplomacy isn't done in public.
<snip>
"But a really cool part of being a country is that you get to pick and choose how aggressively you want to pursue those obligations. Overall, this is nothing more than diplomacy at work. The US is naming names to show they've slipped inside China's defenses. None of it really means anything. Serious diplomacy isn't done in public."
I would agree that a lot of this public malarkey is just smoke and mirrors. As we know politicians and diplomats will consort with and negotiate with their mortal enemies. Public statements mean nothing and are generally to feed the populace and keep them happy.
Now if I was China I would publish a bigger list, consisting of Fort Meade personnel (NSA by and large) and other agencies involved in economic warefare on China. Then we could have a nice little war of naming and shaming to the greater benefit of us plebs.
" If China were a civilised state, those people would be found guilty in China and duly prosecuted."
First, China is, and for about 4000 years has been, a civilised state by whatever were the contemporary standards of civilisation.
Second, the accused are Chinese military personnel and rather unlikely to be tried under Chinese law for acts that probably were no more illegal there than Five Eyes foreign intelligence activity is under applicable laws in Australia, Canada, NewU Zealand, UK, and US. This is little more than a public shaming effort.
If I want to secure my house physically I know or can easily find out what materials to use to do a proper job. If I fit a bloody great steel front door and reinforce the walls, floor, roof and windows I can be pretty sure I will be able to keep out most efforts to break in. OK my locks will need to be good and so on but physical security is generally possible to a reasonable level.
IT security is laughable. There are bugs (unintentional or otherwise) and back doors to contend with. On top of that it turns out that our own security services maintain silence when they discover snags so that they can use them for their own ends, which would be fine but criminal orgs are getting rather good at this game as well and they ARE interested in me as a target.
On top of that the entire fucking internet connected world can have a crack at me whenever they like.
The best I can manage is a bit like my house is now - a lock on the front door that a lock smith could get through in a few minutes and with glass windows that wont take much effort with a hammer and nail.
Hmmm, at least the whole world are unlikely to have a bash at my home though.
Cheers
Jon
...because now an otherwise honest move like pushing charges against these scumbags became nothing more than a practical joke when US-based crooks (some are even uniformed, see ret. Gen Alexander) are doing much worse and even at home, against Americans, without any reason.
All the crap swirling around and about NSA, GCHQ, etc... and the government goes and pulls this???? Yep.. I think we're all waiting for the retaliation and political BS to follow. After Cisco's letter to the POTUS, I suspect they may end being collateral damage.
One word: jobs. Cyber-espionage costs U.S. companies around $100 billion every year, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Yeah well, I can make up about 5 farty statistics before breakfast, too.
I wonder why "jobs" are not being talked about when the Chinese are financing the US by buying shitty treasuries while bleeding themselves dry exporting goods they had better make for their internal market?
Political arguing, I guess. Soundbites, stupidity and talking points.
That there is state-sponsored spying on US companies by Chinese nationals I can understand. (Equally so the reverse.) That the US are able to identify those individuals I can also understand.
What I can't understand is why these people have actually been named openly.
The US knows the Chinese are spying and China knows the US knows - and vice-versa. I just can't see what is gained by making this kind of inside knowledge public.
Perhaps it's for the US public but surely they'd have to really follow-through for this to have any solid effect at home.
Yes, it's for the PR. Makes it more concrete in the public mind. Any Senator or pundit can emphasise, "and they STILL haven't extradited Wen, Wang, Sun, Huang and Gu". Can you specify any secret economic data stolen in the Bermudan phone calls, or name the people who stole them? No? Then it's all theoretical.
> What I can't understand is why these people have actually been named openly.
To publicly embarrass China. This is the US saying "we physically penetrated your defenses and took photos of your operatives without you knowing, now you'll have to guess how we did it, what else we did -- and what we left behind."
To a degree it might be payback for Snowden, which was China publicly embarrassing the US and saying "back off, big guy, we have plenty of moles like this right in the heart of your organization".
In the short term the effect will be harassment of US companies in China, in the slighter longer term either a decrease in Chinese spying, or US import customs/sanctions against Chinese goods.
@Vociferous
Really?
I asked the question so I'm not having a go at you but that just doesn't seem so likely to me. Perhaps I am mistaken but I was under the impression that this type of spying has been going on for ever and is all very common and so, at least in for those in the know, pretty banal.
I mean, the US has been spying in just this way (and every other) on China (and every other country) for a very long time.
The 'public shaming' theory, while certainly possible, would imply that identifying these breaches is somehow special and so needs to be taken advantage of. To me, that seems somewhat unlikely, given the massive breadth of scope of the spying conducted by these countries and the length of time they have been doing it.
In short, the longer and broader a spying program, the more frequently people will be 'caught' spying and therefore the less exceptional this will be.
"...in the indictment and said the US move was "a serious violation of the basic norms of international relations.""
That is quite true. *Normally*, when one nation attacks military assets of another country, as the PRC has repeatedly done for far longer than the NSA has been, war is declared.
So, it really comes down to if the PRC really wants to play that game with another nuclear armed nation.
Yeah, wind power secrets. The Danish company Vestas, formerly a world leader in wind power, was invited, with huge subsidies and promises of cheap labor, to build a factory in China. Their patents were stolen, Vestas was coerced by the Chinese state to drop all claims against the patent thieves, and today those patents form the core of the Chinese wind power industry. The names are different but the story the same with the Chinese solar power industry.
Pretty much the same happens to all companies which build factories in China, they have to make patents available to Chinese competitors, or they will find it impossible to stay in China.
Companies which have tech China wants and which DON'T build factories in China first of all will find it very difficult to sell their products to China, and secondly they get hacked, for instance by the famous Unit 61398.
The scale of theft it enormous. ALL major companies get hacked by the Chinese. You don't hear about it because anyone who complains get kicked out of China, and no one can afford to get kicked out of the biggest market on the planet. It's the same with countries, any country complaining gets its companies sanctioned by China -- except the USA, which is the only market sufficiently important to China that China can't simply cut it off.
And there's plenty of IP in the oil industry too. Google "the Farewell Dossier" to see what happened when Russia stole oil industry IP in the 80's.
That IP wasn't stolen from Britain. That was our rightful due for the suffering of the Colonists under the heavy hand of a power mad Kingling and his idolatry. Or something.
They go on at great lengths about it in school. But it's about as factually accurate as any other State sponsored, mandatory, education. The Hitler History channel is at least entertaining, especially now that they've adopted Bullet Time in their documentaries.
In seriousness, the people who became British stole and scavenged the property of the Romans and used it to invade Asia to steal their technology and sell them drugs. That sounds awful, but it was really quite equitable as they still owed for centuries of monopolistic control of trade routes.
You can dig as deep as you want, but there is nothing down that hole you're going to want to find. Human nature and pride always find justification for their actions, but denounce the same actions in others. It's guaranteed. While it may hurt the pride of a few overly Nationalized souls, there isn't a lot in the past of any extant nation that's very unique or new. It has all been done before and will all be done again. Someone takes from someone else and someone new takes from them.
Yes, it has some downsides, sure. But most of us will never have intestinal parasites, be flogged, be left wondering what a shaved beaver looks like, be drawn into mortal combat with another Human, pressed onto a naval vessel or risk being eaten by a wild animal. Plus we can sit here, or ride down the road in the back of our cars, and communicate how awful everything is. Tell me that's not fucking progress.
@Don Jefe
It's interesting to watch the attitude towards China (and, to a lesser extent, India) from 'The West'. A lot of the practices we are condemning in them are ones that up until relatively recently, our countries and ancestors were engaged in.
In a way, China is still going through a kind of industrial revolution. One (off-topic) side-effect of this is increased pollution, for which we vilify them. Likewise we wail about them stealing Western IP but they are only doing what has been done by other countries during their own development.
@Vociferous - your comment really shows your lack of understanding:
"Their patents were stolen, Vestas was coerced by the Chinese state to drop all claims against the patent thieves"
Patents cannot be "stolen". Patents are public documents, and the grantee is given an exclusive right for 20 (sometimes 25) years to exploit the invention disclosed by the patent. What a company could do is infringe a patent (i.e. use the invention without the patent owner's permission), in which case they may (if successfully sued) owe royalties... This is still not stealing. Also, patents are country-specific. So, if you have a US patent, then you can use the invention in another country (e.g. China) without infringing or paying (unless you happen also to have the Chinese patent for the same invention).
Yes, some years ago the Chinese were renowned for not enforcing IP rights (incl. patents) very thoroughly, but that situation has changed a lot in recent years.
On the other hand, it is of course possible for Chinese (or Americans or anyone else (France, Israel etc.) to illicitly steal SECRET intellectual property rights (e.g. formulas/blue prints etc) of course, but then these would probably not be patented (i.e. publicly disclosed). In any case, the USA also engages in this sort of commercial espionage.
So what? Even though they fully know this - it is well documented that one has to have 51% Chinese ownership of the company, IP has to be supplied and there is exchange controls blocking the loot from ever leaving China - The western businesses go to China regardless.
Massive stupidity, Massive fraud, Corruption all the way ... what is it?
So, the USA, still smarting at being outwitted by China at playing the game of capitalism as they themselves play it, now go into a complete strop when China plays the game of international espionage better in this move than the USA does, and so they forget the rules against hypocrisy and what Snowdon revealed.
There's nothing so pitiful as a little emperor screaming and kicking when its petty little games are thwarted. Mind you, China is just as bad...
There are no good guys in this story.
Just out of control spying organizations that just can't stop collecting information on people.
With no effective oversight on either side does anyone really trust they not spying on everyone?
As for security any company part of whose income derives from "know how," "knowledge" or any other synonym for IP (including how they run their business as well as the products they make) should realize from day 1 that there are people who want your s**t.
It's not about how much good security costs, it's about how much you lose if your p**s poor bargain basement efforts fail.
> p**s poor bargain basement efforts
You should definitely go into IT security. Every major company would love to hear how they could protect themselves against having their secrets stolen by spy-tech, Chinese moles, zero day exploits, and social engineering. When someone with the resources of a state actor want your s**t, it's really hard to keep them from getting it.
"You should definitely go into IT security. "
Maybe I already am. You'd never know.
" Every major company would love to hear how they could protect themselves against having their secrets stolen by spy-tech, Chinese moles, zero day exploits, and social engineering. "
What a charmingly perfect world you must live in. Please pat a passing unicorn on the head for me.
IRL no Board member likes to hear they are going to have to spend serious money (and OMFG it's not even as if it's all on hardware but training on vermin staff, who could like, leave us afterward and take it with them, the ba**ards)
"When someone with the resources of a state actor want your s**t, it's really hard to keep them from getting it."
Well done.
You have learned the first lesson of security.
Start with the peons no one is supposed to know about vs the public faces.
Just to reverse the point that the MSS have mapped the NSA personnel in the same way.
Nothing like photos of NSA/GCHQ secret squirrels on the world's websites to make the point.
But then work the way up to the 4star in charge.
Maybe Ukraine could charge the Russian army with trespass?
If these guys were committing 'theft' then the US should report them to the Chinese authorities for discipline. If they were obeying the lawful orders of their superiors then the dispute should be with the Chinese government and not the individuals. Charging someone in a foreign country's army intelligence agency with gathering intelligence seems ridiculous.
Unfortunately, the Internet has led to our cover being blown. We've never been united, really. The Untied States would be closer to the truth.
The country has been split 50/50(ish) on everything from bolting out our British oppressors to keeping/freeing slaves, all the way down to what kind of soap or personal electronics one chooses. Historically, four to five years is about as long as we care to stand mostly in agreement on anything. If we can't actually see who we're fighting we'd much rather fight amongst ourselves. Overall, I think the world is better off for that :)
Why are we doing this?
Yes, China hackers pen USA computers. So what? USA hackers do the same. Does the USA really want a political problem with *both* Russia and China at the same time?
Want them to stop? Then pour some money into building out some actual security. Oh wait, but that might interfere with the various agencies abilities to monitor their own people... Well, you can't have it both ways. Either secure the crap or ignore it when someone else walks through the door to take it.
We can begin with lots of security by obscurity.
Those with longer memories will recall agreements between China and MS to allow China access to source code.
Some folks in the PLA did some serious study and found some good holes -- much as was done at NSA.
Yes there's also holes in open source -- knowledge of which spooks and crims tend to keep to themselves. But security research (poking for holes) can and does get honest folks charged -- giving said spooks and crims a longer time to work undisclosed exploits.
Spare a tear for management which will have to spend serious money on security -- beginning with skilled security personnel and some serious infrastructure and password revamping. I'd keep the old password servers so that any password there would be invalid -- the PLA and NSA already have them.
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