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China Businesses Security Transportation

China Hacks Airbus Suppliers For Commercial Secrets (ibtimes.com) 50

Posted by EditorDavid from the industrial-espionage dept.
An anonymous reader quotes International Business Times: European aerospace giant Airbus has been hit by a series of attacks by hackers targeting its suppliers in search of commercial secrets, sources told AFP, adding they suspected a Chinese link. AFP spoke to seven security and industry sources, all of whom confirmed a spate of attacks in the past 12 months but asked for anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information they were sharing...

Many state-backed and independent hackers are known to disguise their tracks, or they may leave clues intended to confuse investigators or lead them to blame someone else. But the sources said they suspected Chinese hackers were responsible, given their record of trying to steal sensitive commercial information and the fact that Beijing has just launched a plane designed to compete with Airbus and US rival Boeing.

State-owned plane-maker Comac has already launched manufacturing of its first mid-range airliner but has struggled to get it certified. Engines and avionics are "areas in which Chinese research and development is weak," one of the sources said.
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China Hacks Airbus Suppliers For Commercial Secrets More

China Hacks Airbus Suppliers For Commercial Secrets

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  • Standard Operating Procedure for China (Score:5, Informative)

    by I75BJC ( 4590021 ) on Sunday September 29, 2019 @08:40AM (#59249348)
    Red China has been doing this for decades.

    Boeing won a contract to produce aircraft for the Chinese National Airline. The contract called for Boeing to build the aircraft in China so Boeing setup factories, manufacturing, assembly and testing facilities inside of China. After the contract was over, China started producing new, Chinese aircraft based on the Boeing design and manufactured, assembled and tested at the former Boeing facilities.

    Airbus requires the work to be accomplished within the consortium countries. China has no access unless they can buy the access so they steal the access.

    Red China has done this all over the world when they want someone else's technology.

    • Re:Standard Operating Procedure for China (Score:5, Informative)

      by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Sunday September 29, 2019 @08:56AM (#59249388)

      Actually, Airbus has an assembly facility for the A320 in China.

    • Everyone has. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Sunday September 29, 2019 @09:05AM (#59249412)

      Not sayigm it's OK or it isn't.

      Just pointing out that it is a key part of the Snowden leaks that Five Eyes did this as a normal part of their business. That Israel Iran and Pakistan have beem caught doing it. And that Russia is also pretty much guaranteed to do it.

      It's kinda the point of a spying agency that follows the interests of the country, in this global asshole society.

    • After the contract was over, China started producing new, Chinese aircraft based on the Boeing design and manufactured, assembled and tested at the former Boeing facilities.

      Now if we could trick them into building Boeing 737 MAXes . . . that would be an counterintelligence coup!

    • What aircraft did Boeing build in China?
      To the best of my knowledge, Boeing has done 2 things in CHina, which was non-critical parts for the 787, and a completion factory for 737 (and this just started).

    • Just like japan and korea and most east asian countries, they're great at manufacturing existing technology but for whatever cultural or social reason they're utterly shit at large scale innovation so have to use others ideas. And if it means stealing them then so be it.

    • What "Chinese National Airline"? Do you mean China Eastern? China Southern? Air China? One of the random city owned airlines?

    • Asian culture simply doesn't grok the concept of industrial secrets protected by law (I am Asian). If you watch anime or read manga, you may have seen this - an employee at a Japanese company is required to spy on a competitor or former employer, or lose their job. That's actually fairly common. The Asian attitude is that if you want to protect an industrial secret, you protect it by securing it like you would a physical object. The idea of freely giving out the secret and expecting patent laws or a non-

  • Now frown at them real hardlike, EU.

  • I think whenever somebody keeps a secret from somebody, that could improve his life, for the only puprose of gaining an (unfair) advantage, and not to protect anyone from harm, ... that's harm, and hence a crime. It's also self-harm in the long run. And a state that supports it is a rogue state.

    Of course I doubt the Chinese leadership care much about not harming others. So keeping certain secrets from them is a smart move.

    But thieves love to confuse the inability to steal from you with stealing from them. I

    • Unfortunately, that leaves us as hunter-gatherers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Sunday September 29, 2019 @09:24AM (#59249446) Journal

      I absolutely see your point. Sharing is great.

      Also, Thomas Edison constructed thousands of prototype light bulbs before finding a design that worked well. Intel spends $23 billion dollars on R&D every year. Why do you think Intel spends $23 billion annually to make computers better and better?

      By the way, the $23 billion is your 401k money and mine. Why do you think Intel is spending that on R&D, and why are we *letting* them spend our retirement money on research a next generation CPU? Because they can sell it make $30 billion back, of course. Nobody spends billions just to be charitable. I wouldn't save up my whole life and spend my retirement savings to research CPU design just to give it away, would you?

      R&D is done to have something better than the competition so that you can sell it and MAKE YOUR MONEY BACK. If R&D doesn't give you a secret sauce, if it was throwing money to competitors, it would be stupid to do R&D. With no R&D since the 1970s, the phone you used to type your post *would not exist*. You'd still be using a rotary dial phone.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • > In fact most progress is done by people who aren't motivated by profit much at all.

          Let us consider that possiblity. Just Intel alone, one company, spends $23 BILLION every year on R&D.

          Can you find any evidence that the sun total of ALL R&D done by people not getting paid to do it is at least $23 billion / year? If there is any evidence of that, that would indicate that the not-for-money R&D equals the R&D of one single for for-profit company.

          The development of Linux would cost about

  • ...So we are told that anonymous sources, without any evidence, "suspected Chinese hackers were responsible".

    Sounds like an open and shut case to me.

    Just to reinforce our understanding here,

    1. It is rumoured that Chinese hackers often steal industrial secrets.

    2. Therefore when industrial secrets are stolen, Chinese hackers must be responsible. (At least it's "highly likely").

    3. This in turn reinforces the belief that Chinese hackers often steal industrial secrets.

    This breathtaking dishonesty would disturb m

    • Agreed. Seeing the history of complete nonsense that's come out of the western media, and to a greater extent the US administration when it comes to attributing hacking to China/Iran/(insert current enemy of the day) all I am seeing is blah blah blah china blah whenever something is going on. Remember those supermicro motherboards that were embedded with chips to spy and all the trumpeting the media did? turned out to be nonsense. If anything, I expect that a state hosting a competitor to Airbus would be

  • Sorry, there's no such thing. Perhaps you confuse it with trade secrets?

  • Not overly surprising. For China, about 1/3 is to steal military secrets, another 1/3 to steal commercial secrets and the last 1/3 is putting in backdoors for utilties and large companies so that during a war for Taiwan (which Chinese leaders are expecting; Right Caffeinated Bacon?), China can take down the west's economy quickly. Smart.
    • Yes WindBourne, as soon as I give the order it's on.
      On a completely unrelated topic, when was it that you were visiting Taiwan (part of China) again?

  • Airbus Suppliers Fail To Protect Their Commercial Secrets, China Walks Off With IP

  • Look at 99% of Chinese products, ESPECIALLY their military, and it looks like knockoff/copycats of western technology. The Chinese government doesn't want to spend the R&D to develop something. Problem is, they may have the "goods", they don't have the skill & training to use it. They might have military combat aircraft carriers, but, they don't have the "tactics" on how to use & deploy them properly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Corbets ( 169101 )

      Presupposing that the article is correct, they at least have the requisite skills to use cyber weapons...

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