German security group sees rise in industrial, commercial spying

May 26, 2009 by 1 Comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A major German corporate security group has echoed recent warnings by the German government that foreign industrial and commercial espionage in Germany is on the increase. Last week, the general manager of the German Association for Security in Industry and Commerce (ASW), Dr. Berthold Stoppelkamp, told German newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung that the targeting of German research and commercial enterprises by mainly Chinese and Russian agents is so extensive that it usually costs the German economy over €20 billion per year, and it may be costing as high as €50 billion per year since 2007. Dr. Stoppelkamp said that, although these covert activities are government-managed, they aim to assist individual Chinese or Russian firms competing against German companies for international contracts. Read more of this post

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Unlike AIPAC lobbyists, retired DoD official to face charges

May 19, 2009 by 1 Comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In a development that one observer described as “the tip of the iceberg with insider threats” at the US Pentagon, a retired official with the US Department of Defense has been charged with conspiracy to communicate classified information to a foreign agent. The US Department of Justice alleges that James Wilbur Fondren, Jr., 62, was part of a spy ring that operated on US soil under the supervision of Chinese government officials, whom Fondren supplied with several classified documents for over three years, beginning in 2004. According to US government prosecutors, six years after retiring from his high-level post at the US Pacific Command’s Washington Liaison Office, Lieutenant Colonel Fondren offered his private consulting services to Tai Shen Kuo, a Taiwanese-American handled by an intelligence agent of the People’s Republic of China. Read more of this post

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Canada aggressively infiltrated by spies, claims new report

April 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

Jim Judd

Jim Judd

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has warned that operations by foreign intelligence agents inside Canada are intensifying. In its annual public report to Canada’s House of Commons, the spy agency says foreign spies operating in Canada are hoping to gain access to military technologies employed by NATO, of which Canada is a member. Foreign operatives are also interested in information on several business sectors ranging from biotechnology and agriculture to oil exploration, aerospace engineering and mining, says the report. The 36-page document, which includes a lengthy introduction by CSIS director Jim Judd, does not mention specific nations as responsible for these operations. But a Reuters report from Canada reminds that China has traditionally been high on CSIS’s list of suspects. Informed observers may recall that in 2005 a Chinese government defector claimed there were at least 1,000 accredited and covert Chinese spies operating in Canada.

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Intelligence sources say US electric grid hacked by foreign spies

April 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In yesterday’s edition, The Wall Street Journal quoted senior US intelligence sources, including former Homeland Security Department officials, who said that foreign spies have penetrated the electronic infrastructure of America’s electrical supply grid. The officials said the hackers, who have reportedly been traced to Russia and China, among other countries, do not currently appear intent on disrupting the system. Instead, they seem to be “on a mission to navigate [and map] the US electrical system and its controls”, allegedly so that they can sabotage it “during a crisis or war”. Interestingly, the discovery was reportedly made not by utility company technicians, but by US intelligence agents engaged in monitoring cyber-intrusions into the nation’s electronic infrastructure. Read more of this post

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US uses Kyrgyz base to spy, say Russians

April 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

Rossiya TV

Rossiya TV

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Just as US officials entered one last round of negotiations to avert the scheduled evacuation of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, Russian television has accused the US Pentagon of secretly using the base to spy on Moscow and Beijing. Government-owned Telekanal Rossiya aired during primetime last Sunday a documentary titled “Base”, which alleged that signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the Pentagon’s primary operational focus at Manas. Footage aired in the documentary showed several windowless buildings located around the perimeter of the Manas Air Base, said to contain components of a “multi-channel, multi-functional system of radio-electronic surveillance […] which controls entire Central Asia, parts of China and Siberia”. Read more of this post

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Researchers discover gigantic cyberespionage operation

March 31, 2009 by 1 Comment

Ronald Deibert

Ronald Deibert

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A team of Canadian researchers claims to have discovered a large cyberespionage ring located mainly in China. The researchers say the ring has managed to infiltrate nearly 1,300 mainly government and corporate computers in at least 103 countries around the world. The report, entitled Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network, was compiled after a ten-month collaboration between Ottawa’s SecDev group and the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Although the report concludes that the cyberespionage ring is located mainly in China, it specifically rejects claims that GhostNet is inevitably a Chinese government operation, saying that there is no evidence that Beijing is behind the operation. University of Toronto associate professor Ronald Deibert suggested that the operation could potentially be the work of non-state pro-Chinese actors, or could be conducted by a profit-oriented group that sells the acquired information to whoever offers it the highest monetary compensation. “It’s a murky realm that we’re lifting the lid on”, said Dr. Deibert: “This could well be the CIA or the Russians”. Read more of this post

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CIA veteran reveals agency’s operations in Tibet

March 14, 2009 by 1 Comment

Gyalo Thondup

Gyalo Thondup

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who supervised the Agency’s covert operations in the Chinese region of Tibet, says he is working on a new book on the subject. John Kenneth Klaus, who, while stationed in India in the 1960s, directed the CIA’s support of Tibetan independence paramilitaries, has given a rare interview to Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star. In it, he admits that the CIA supplied weapons to Tibetan monks, who are widely known for their non-violent philosophy. According to 85-year-old Klaus, the origins of the CIA’s covert assistance to Tibetan monks date back to at least 1957, when Gyalo Thondup, older brother of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits, whom the Agency trained in paramilitary tactics on the island of Saipan, in the Northern Marianas. Shortly afterwards the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance”. In the process, they recruited another 300 Tibetans who were secretly transported to Colorado and trained by Klaus and other US intelligence and military officers. Read more of this post

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US-China naval standoff worst in years, US intel chief says

March 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Last Sunday’s naval confrontation between a US Navy ship and five Chinese vessels was “the most serious” in seven years, according to US Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Admiral Dennis Blair. The last known serious intelligence row between the two nations occurred in 2001, when a Chinese Air Force plane collided with a US electronic surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the damaged US plane to perform an emergency landing on Chinese territory. Last Sunday’s incident also occurred in the South China Sea, approximately 75 miles off the Chinese island of Hainan. The US Pentagon initially claimed that its ship, the USNS Impeccable, was a “research vessel”, but it later admitted that it is used to “to hunt” foreign submarines. Read more of this post

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Taiwan charges two senior aides with spying for China

March 7, 2009 by 2 Comments

Chen Shui-bian

Chen Shui-bian

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two senior Taiwanese government aides arrested last January have been formally charged with violating Taiwan’s national security law by providing Chinese officials with classified information. Wang Ren-bing, a former senior advisor at the Office of the President, and Chen Pin-jen, a legislative aide at the Taiwanese Parliament, were arrested two months ago, when Taiwanese counterintelligence officials conducted early-morning raids at the two aides’ homes and offices. The authorities, who found over one hundred copies of restricted and classified government documents in Wang’s office, allege that Wang routinely gave documents to Chen, who then handed them over to a Chinese government agent, identified as Tan Gang, during frequent trips to China, or via encrypted facsimile dispatches. Read more of this post

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Analysis: US issues financial warfare warnings against China, Russia

February 20, 2009 by 1 Comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
It turns out that Admiral Dennis Blair wasn’t kidding when he said last week that “the primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications”. Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence warned during his annual threat assessment that “the longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to US strategic interests”. The continuing credit vulnerability of the US economy is central to these fears, and it appears to be forcing the rapid rise of microeconomic concerns to the top of the US intelligence community’s threat list. A major aspect of these concerns centers on the hard-to-ignore fact that China currently holds close to $1 trillion-worth of US monetary debt. Trade experts suggest that, should China suddenly decide to offer these securities for sale, “the US dollar would tank”. The chances of this happening are slim -the Chinese economy would also suffer from such a move- but US intelligence agencies are taking no chances. On February 19, the office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a public warning to the Chinese government that it would consider any attempts to sell US Treasury bonds an act of “financial warfare”. Keep reading →

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Taiwan says unwilling spies blackmailed by China

February 13, 2009 by 1 Comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The Taiwanese government has announced the arrest of four Taiwanese civil servants caught spying on behalf of China. Justice Ministry spokesperson, Luo Chi-wang, said the four were blackmailed by Chinese intelligence officers after they were photographed walking into a red-light-district bar in an unnamed city of mainland China. The Chinese officers warned the four civil servants that they would send copies of the photographs to their families unless they worked as operatives for the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the intelligence agency of the People’s Republic of China. Read more of this post

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Britain says at least 20 countries spying on it

February 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper has revealed a government report, which states that the UK is a “high priority espionage target” for “at least 20 foreign intelligence services”. The report, issued to UK government departments on January 19, 2009, warns against overlooking traditional espionage threats while focusing almost solely on the activities of al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. Authored by a group of British Army Intelligence Corps officers, the report identifies Chinese and Russian espionage networks as the most active on British soil, and discloses that “[t]he number of Russian intelligence officers in London has not fallen since the Soviet times”. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Former USAF Secretary discusses hidden history of nukes

January 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

It is not necessary to agree with Thomas C. Reed’s worldview in order to appreciate his deep knowledge of the history of nuclear politics. His argument, for instance, that “the world is safer for having all the permanent UN Security Council members possess nuclear weapons” may be seen as absurdly myopic -especially in light of numerous instances in which the US and the USSR came close to annihilating the entire world during the Cold War. Nevertheless, the former nuclear weapons designer and US Air Force Secretary always has interesting insights to share on the dark history of nuclear proliferation. For instance, in a recent interview with US News & World Report, Reed discussed how Klaus Fuchs, the nuclear scientist who was jailed in 1950 for having spied for the Soviets, also shared his immense nuclear knowledge with the Chinese, following his release from prison. He also outlined the Chinese contribution to nuclear proliferation in the Third World, which he attributes to a 1982 decision by the Chinese leadership, under the Chairmanship of Deng Xiaoping, to “proliferate nuclear technology to communists and Muslims” around the world. Read more of this post

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Australians suspect Chinese networking firm of intelligence ties

December 18, 2008 by Leave a comment

Several months ago, Chinese networking investor Singtel Optus placed a very competitive bid on the Australian government’s $15 billion project to build the country’s first unified national broadband network. Now the Australians say they are suspicious of the company, because of its ties to China’s Huawei Technologies. Huawei is described as a “shadowy company based in Shenzen and founded by former People’s Liberation Army officer and Communist Party member Ren Zhengfei”. Read more of this post

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US President briefed about severe cyber-attack on Pentagon

November 28, 2008 by Leave a comment

Conflicting and muddled reports have emerged in the US media about a purported cyber-attack that struck the Pentagon’s computers last month. The only thing that appears certain at this point is that the attack “raised potential implications for national security” that were considered important enough to brief the President. It also appears that the malicious software-based attack severely affected computer networks at CentCom, which oversees US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to one report, the software originated in Russia and appeared “designed specifically to target military networks”. Another report claims the attack actually originated in China, although “[m]ilitary electronics experts have not pinpointed the source or motive of the attack”. The pattern of the reports appears to point to yet another case of “the Pentagon once again has no idea what’s the matter with their computer networks so they’re simply blaming the usual suspects (Russia and China) hoping to deflect attention from the dire security standards in government computer networks”. [JF]

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