Ten Chinese nationals are charged in a newly unsealed indictment involving hacking and intellectual property theft against companies around the world.
IP theft charges against the Chinese? Nothing surprising, right?
Not until you get to page 5 of the indictment, where you see the Chinese national IT security manager for a French aerospace company (Company 1) was "in on" the conspiracy led by Chinese intelligence:
GU was Company 1's Information Technology ('IT') lnfrastructure and Security Manager in Suzhou. Among other things, while under the direction of an identified JSSD intelligence officer.... GU provided information to JSSD concerning Company 1's internal investigation into the computer intrusions carried out by members of the conspiracy.
Did you catch that?
We know lots of our readers are based in the West and have operations in China. But how secure can you be if your Chinese employees decide to or are coerced to work with government spies?
In this case, it appears Chinese intelligence hired hackers to target the French aviation company through phishing, watering hole attacks, and domain hijacking, while at the same time recruiting a product manager at the company's China office to install malware onto the system so hackers would have greater access.
Once the company discovered something unusual was going on, the IT security manager informed hackers and spies about the internal investigation so they could be one step ahead.
And according to the newly unsealed Chinese insider and hacking indictment, this was the start of a sprawling hacking effort at additional aerospace and high tech companies across the globe—all in the name of stealing intellectual property.
This includes:
- A Massachusetts-based aerospace company
- An aerospace company based in the United Kingdom, with offices in Pennsylvania
- An aerospace company based in the United Kingdom, with offices in New York
- A multinational conglomerate that produces commercial and consumer products and aerospace systems
- A French aerospace company
- An Arizona-based aerospace company
- An Oregon-based aerospace supplier
- A San Diego-based technology company
- A French aerospace manufacturer with an office in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China
- A critical infrastructure company operating in San Diego and elsewhere
- A Wisconsin-based aerospace company
- An Australian domain registrar
- Capstone Turbines, a Los Angeles-based gas turbine manufacturer
"The Chinese R&D efforts are based largely on the theft of intellectual property," Lt. Major (Ret.) Brett Williams told us at a SecureWorld cybersecurity conference.
This indictment is more evidence of how far Chinese operatives will go to steal it.
