the us crackdown economic espionage mess

While not charged as economic espionage, the case is part of a broader U.S. Last week the Justice Department indicted a University of Kansas researcher on federal fraud charges for concealing his ties to a Chinese university while working on a government-funded research project. In addition, the department has obtained guilty pleas and convictions in six older espionage cases, while charging four Chinese nationals for evading sanctions against North Korea. In the last 10 months, the Justice Department has brought charges against Chinese nationals and entities in at least seven separate economic espionage cases, up from three during the prior 10 months. Justice Department is escalating prosecution of Chinese economic espionage cases, part of the Trump administration's crackdown on China's alleged theft of American intellectual property and other predatory practices that are at the heart of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. “It is vital that operators of critical national infrastructure take action to prevent attackers hiding on their systems,” Paul Chichester, director at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre said in a joint statement with the NSA.The U.S. The NSA and other Western cyber agencies urged companies that operate critical infrastructure to identify malicious activity using the technical guidance they issued. Security analysts expect Chinese hackers could target US military networks and other critical infrastructure if China invades Taiwan. “There is greater interest in this actor because of the geopolitical situation.” As China has stepped up military and diplomatic pressure in its claim to democratically governed Taiwan, US President Joe Biden has said he would be willing to use force to defend Taiwan. The Chinese activity is unique and worrying also because analysts don’t yet have enough visibility on what this group might be capable of, he added. “It means they are preparing for that possibility,” said John Hultquist, who heads threat analysis at Google’s Mandiant Intelligence. Microsoft analysts said they had “moderate confidence” this Chinese group, which it dubbed as ‘Volt Typhoon’, was developing capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the US and Asia region during future crises. Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand warned they could be targeted by the hackers too. It was not immediately clear how many organisations were affected, but the US National Security Agency (NSA) said it was working with partners, as well as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify breaches. “But no matter what varied methods are used, none of this can change the fact that the United States is the empire of hacking,” she told a regular press briefing in Beijing. Mao said the campaign was launched by the US for geopolitical reasons and that the report from Microsoft analysts showed that the US government was expanding its channels of disinformation beyond government agencies.īeijing rejects claim, says it is ‘collective disinformation campaign’

The espionage has also targeted the US island territory of Guam, home to strategically important American military bases, Microsoft said in a report, adding that “mitigating this attack could be challenging.” While China and the United States routinely spy on each other, analysts say this is one of the largest known Chinese cyber-espionage campaigns against American critical infrastructure.Ĭhinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Thursday the hacking allegations were a “collective disinformation campaign” from the Five Eyes countries, a reference to the intelligence sharing grouping of countries made up of the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK. WASHINGTON: A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of US critical infrastructure organisations, from telecommunications to transportation hubs, Western intelligence agencies and Microsoft said on Wednesday.

The us crackdown economic espionage mess