ESPIONAGE FOR MAC TRIAL

intelligence officials said China is the most prolific and poses the biggest threat. While Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nations also use LinkedIn and other platforms to identify recruitment targets, the U.S.

He is due to be sentenced in September and could face life in prison. defense secrets - sent over a special cellular device he was given - even though he assessed his Chinese contacts to be intelligence officers, according to the U.S. The individual, using the name Richard Yang, arranged a telephone call between Mallory and a man claiming to work at a Shanghai think tank.ĭuring two subsequent trips to Shanghai, Mallory agreed to sell U.S.

ESPIONAGE FOR MAC TRIAL

What they say is complete nonsense and has ulterior motives,” the ministry said in a statement.īut Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Beijing’s exploitation of LinkedIn “demonstrates the length to which Chinese intelligence will go, and the 21st Century counter-intelligence challenges facing us in a world where everybody’s got an online footprint.” EX-CIA OFFICER ENSNAREDĮvanina said he was speaking out in part because of the case of Kevin Mallory, a retired CIA officer convicted in June of conspiring to commit espionage for China.Ī fluent Mandarin speaker, Mallory was struggling financially when he was contacted via a LinkedIn message in February 2017 by a Chinese national posing as a headhunter, according to court records and trial evidence. officials you cite have to reach this conclusion. “We do not know what evidence the relevant U.S. To match Exclusive LINKEDIN-CHINA/ESPIONAGE REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration flag and Linkedin logo in this illustration picture, August 30, 2018. Small toy figures are seen between displayed U.S. elections.Ĭhina’s foreign ministry disputed Evanina’s allegations. Do you want to be where Facebook was this past spring with congressional testimony, right?’” he said, referring to lawmakers’ questioning of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Russia’s use of Facebook to meddle in the 2016 U.S. LinkedIn “is a victim here,” Evanina said. He said the company takes “very prompt action to restrict accounts and mitigate and stop any essential damage that can happen” but gave no details. Rockwell declined to provide numbers of fake accounts associated with Chinese intelligence agencies. “We’ve never waited for requests to act and actively identify bad actors and remove bad accounts using information we uncover and intelligence from a variety of sources including government agencies.” “We are doing everything we can to identify and stop this activity,” Rockwell told Reuters. Rockwell did not say whether those were Chinese accounts. Earlier this month, LinkedIn said it had taken down “less than 40” fake accounts whose users were attempting to contact LinkedIn members associated with unidentified political organizations. law enforcement agencies about Chinese espionage efforts. LinkedIn’s head of trust and safety, Paul Rockwell, confirmed the company had been talking to U.S. members.Įvanina did not, however, say whether he was frustrated by LinkedIn’s response or whether he believes it has done enough. LinkedIn says it has 575 million users in more than 200 counties and territories, including more than 150 million U.S. intelligence official to single out an American-owned company by name and publicly recommend it take action. National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center. “I recently saw that Twitter is cancelling, I don’t know, millions of fake accounts, and our request would be maybe LinkedIn could go ahead and be part of that,” said Evanina, who heads the U.S.

official has publicly discussed the challenge in the United States and indicated it is a bigger problem than previously known.Įvanina said LinkedIn should look at copying the response of Twitter, Google and Facebook, which have all purged fake accounts allegedly linked to Iranian and Russian intelligence agencies. German and British authorities have previously warned their citizens that Beijing is using LinkedIn to try to recruit them as spies. intelligence had discovered, how many Americans may have been contacted and how much success China has had in the recruitment drive. He said the Chinese campaign includes contacting thousands of LinkedIn members at a time, but he declined to say how many fake accounts U.S. counter-intelligence chief, told Reuters in an interview that intelligence and law enforcement officials have told LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft Corp., about China’s “super aggressive” efforts on the site.

Espionage for mac