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| Britain | |||||
| MI5: China bugs and burgles Britain | |||||
| 2010-01-31 | |||||
THE security service MI5 has accused China of bugging and burgling UK business executives and setting up "honeytraps" in a bid to blackmail them into betraying sensitive commercial secrets.
The gifts -- cameras and memory sticks -- have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to users computers. MI5 says the Chinese government "represents one of the most significant espionage threats to the UK" because of its use of these methods, as well as widespread electronic hacking.
It claims China has also gone much further, targeting the computer networks and email accounts of public relations companies and international law firms. "Any UK company might be at risk if it holds information which would benefit the Chinese," the report says. The explicit nature of the MI5 warning is likely to strain diplomatic ties between London and Beijing. Relations between the two countries were damaged last month after Chinas decision to execute a mentally ill British man for alleged drug trafficking. Earlier this month the United States demanded that China investigate a sophisticated hacking attack on Google and a further 30 American companies from Chinese soil. China has occasionally attempted sexual entrapment to target senior British political figures.
The report says the practice has now extended to commercial espionage. It warns that British executives are being targeted in China and in other countries. China has repeatedly denied spying on Britain and the West. Its London embassy did not comment. In 2007 Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, had written privately to 300 chief executives of banks and other businesses warning them that their IT systems were under attack from "Chinese state organisations". There have been unconfirmed reports that China has tried to hack into computers belonging to the Foreign Office, nine other Whitehall departments and parliament.
The growing threat from China has led Evans to complain that his agency is being forced to divert manpower and resources away from the fight against Al-Qaeda. His lobbying helped to prompt the Cabinet Office to set up the Office of Cyber Security, which will be launched in March.
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| Posted by:lotp |
| #3 ...only if the subjects were Justice Dept. lawyers, I suspect. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-01-31 09:44 |
| #2 In his sequel to The Eiger Sanction, Trevanian wrote The Loo Sanction, in which the assassin Hemlock, played by Clint Eastwood in the movie, is transplanted to Britain, where he is blackmailed to work for British Intelligence. With great irony, Trevanian wrote The Eiger Sanction to be a spy novel parody, and The Loo Sanction, to be a parody of both The Eiger Sanction and the ultraviolence of Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. But both were taken at face value by the public and became best sellers. I mention this because the leadership of British Intelligence was depicted as amazingly ruthless and vicious, led by a Church of England Reverend who saw no hypocrisy in leading church services one minute, and supervising the harvesting of organs from comatose enemy spy prisoners for the next. Quite an enjoyable read, but makes the ruthlessness of James Bond look rather effete. And since Trevanian had some special insight into the workings of the US and British Intelligence operations, it would seem they had no objection to being portrayed as murderous. Makes you wonder if they still "have it", when it comes to espionage hardball. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-01-31 08:25 |
| #1 How many US computers have key elements made in China? |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-01-31 02:43 |