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China Outs US Hackers for Attack, a New Frontier in Spy Games (bloomberg.com) 32

China's outing of alleged US National Security Agency hackers marks a major escalation in the ongoing tit-for-tat between Chinese and American intelligence agencies, according to analysts. From a report: Chinese authorities Tuesday said three NSA employees hacked the Asian Winter Games held this year in Harbin, accusing them of targeting systems that held vast amounts of personal information on people involved in the event. The hacks "severely endangered the security of China's critical information infrastructure, national defense, finance, society, production, as well as citizens' personal information," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters.

While the US has repeatedly published names of alleged Chinese hackers and filed criminal charges against them, China has historically refrained from making similar accusations against American spies. Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at the cyber firm Sophos' Secureworks unit, said the development may signal a broader policy change from Chinese security agencies, with allegations of US cyberattacks becoming more specific and timely. "This is an escalation in China's experimentation with 'name and shame' policies for the alleged perpetrators of cyberattacks, mirroring US pursuit of a similar policy for a number of years now," said Pilling.

China Outs US Hackers for Attack, a New Frontier in Spy Games

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  • by taustin ( 171655 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @06:17PM (#65308799) Homepage Journal

    They've never "name and shamed" US spies in the past because to do so, they'd have to admit the attacks were successful. This damages their self image of superiority over the west, which can be very dangerous to the leadership of the country.

    Are they stepping up the conflict? Or did they blink (like they did when they started shopping for - not very successfully - allies in the trade war)?

    • by topham ( 32406 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @06:33PM (#65308835) Homepage

      This is called diplomacy.

      China is entirely prepared to out the US dirty laundry.

      They (the US) might want to consider what's in the laundry basket.

      • Most of the U.S. population doesn't care that our own government is effectively spying on its own citizens. Do you think anyone here is going to give a damn about things we've done to other countries? The problem with bean spilling is that it doesn't incentivize the other side to stay quiet about what they know.

        Personally I'm all for it. It's sad that it would take a foreign government to give our citizens the kind of transparency that we deserve for our own government, but I'll take what I can get. I do
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

        China is entirely prepared to out the US dirty laundry.
        They (the US) might want to consider what's in the laundry basket.

        Bunches of dirty, orange-colored face towels?

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        Leadership in China needs to keep their domestic politics foremost in their minds at all times. They walk a tightrope always, and they have based their current government (and most governments throughout history) on the premise that those in charge are inherently superior to those they govern, who are, in turn, inherently superior to everyone else in the world. Anything that damages that self image is dangerous to the leadership, personally.

        Always been that way there, always will be, until it collapses enti

      • Did they happen to find a black sock?
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's not possible to shame Republicans.
      The Presidents of America and El Salvador both joked together in the Whitehouse on national television about keeping an innocent person imprisoned in a notorious jail.
      Sickening to any observer. Well unless they're Republicans. You can't shame these kinds of people.
    • They've never "name and shamed" US spies in the past because [...] This damages their self image

      LOL, please, it damages nothing - propaganda about concealed operations against "the people" have always been a part of the "official" public image of the USA in the part of the world that developed behind the Iron Curtain. There is even a special name for it and you can easily see how it came about by looking at what languages in Wikipedia have it - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Besides, how does exposing an operation like the alleged one in TFS would be "damaging"? How is a successful 'acking of a low-

    • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @10:59PM (#65309281)

      Or did they blink (like they did when they started shopping for - not very successfully - allies in the trade war)?

      It's far too early to declare winners and losers in the global trade war. No one knows what Trump's trade and tariffs policy is. Not even Trump. He might know today, but he usually doesn't tell tomorrow's Trump what's happening.

      The small countries like Taiwan and Vietnam are keen to kowtow to Trump because they have no choice. These countries sort of blinked because blinking for them is largely inconsequential, i.e., Taiwan's lowering of their world-leading lowest 1.7% tariffs is insignificant for Taiwan. However, the stronger economies like China and the EU know that they can inflict significant damage on the US economy.

      Furthermore, Trump is not the only one looking forward to a isolationist US economic policy. China and even the EU would welcome a fall of the US dollar as the world currency franca, as that would severely decrease American influence throughout the world.

    • hah. or they understand that they, and every other country on the planet, is constantly under cyberattack and instead of using what is a day-to-day reality of today's world to whip up hysteria, they don't.

      only idiots believe the narrative we're constantly fed.

  • by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @06:44PM (#65308857)

    Make a lot of noise over here so that over there you can get all sorts of intelligence.

  • China has complete control of public opinion inside the country. In addition they can sway public opinion in most mandarin speaking population via social media blitz. China is using this chance to step up to become the new leader in regional trade, creating pacts and alliances without the US. For a while, there was a lot of talk about USD not being reserve currency but that fizzled out especially post pandemic when China's economy was in deep trouble. 5 months ago Economist cover says US economy is envy
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      You could change China for the US and Mandarin for English in your first two sentences and be more correct. The US government in cooperation with the Madison Avenue advertising agencies and the media behemoths have made us probably the most propagandized people on the planet. At least the Chinese people know that most any pronouncement from their government is going to be designed to present themselves in the best light possible. As a Soviet general told writer Farley Mowat, "The difference between US pr

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If that is true then how come they had protests over COVID lockdowns, resulting in the government backing down and lifting them?

  • by Anonymous Coward
    > director of threat intelligence at the cyber firm Sophos' Secureworks unit

    SNORT!
  • ... because he's a criminal, china out's USA cyber security experts because of politics. Yeah ... that's how the ccp rolls.

  • Just to confim.

    One week our orange-soda-face-in-chief raised taxation on all products made in China except those made by Mapple.
    Then ChYna matched those rates but not exactly but since they don't need US smaartphones and laptops, pretty much the same.

    AND NOW Chyna has MAGICALLY (in two days) discovered NSA hacking.

    Look, the NSA is hella good. If I were someone you'd know I'd tell you how good they are. And ChYna outed them in two days?

    Someoe's been sleeping on the job.

    Queue the autism vaccine Chyna Signal

  • Wait, did China just admit they keep defense secrets in the Winter Games systems? Seriously?

What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.

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