Chicago Mercantile Exchange Secrets Leaked To China

chicksdaddy writes with this excerpt from Threat Post: "A 10 year employee of CME Group in Chicago is alleged to have stolen trade secrets and proprietary source code used to run trading systems for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and passed them to officials in China, where he hoped to set up a software firm to help create electronic exchanges, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Illinois. Chunlai Yang, 49, is alleged to have downloaded "thousands of files" containing "source code and proprietary algorithms" used by CME to run its trading systems. The files were downloaded from a company-owned source code repository maintained by CME to Yang's work computer, then copied them to removable "thumb" drives. The complaint also cites personal e-mail correspondence between Yang and an official in China that contained proprietary CME information."

Comments

Thousand Grains of Sand

[SplashMyBandit]

The Chinese Government has a policy known as the 'Thousand Grains of Sand' where each citizen is encouraged to bring back a little something from overseas if they can. Then one of the hundreds of thousands of state officials implementing this policy will see what the person brought back and dole out any appropriate reward. This is why Chinese citizens (and some Chinese descended citizens who return to the motherland) are being caught all over the World doing this sort of stuff (eg. in New Zealand Chinese regularly get caught stealing agricultural samples that our higher-value export industries are based on). While anyone can be a criminal, I can't think of any other country in the modern age where this is officially sanctioned.

China wants to be number one in the World, and perhaps they will get there, but it seems an awful shame they're so determined to do so that they are quite unethical (from the majority of the rest of the World's point of view). This is not meant to be a bashing of China, or of Chinese citizens, just an explanation of why these events are becoming more frequent for those unaware of the official Chinese Government policy that encourages behavour considered criminal elsewhere. The Chinese Government will smile at you while robbing your house behind your back (although this is nothing compared to how they treat their own citizens).

Re:Thousand Grains of Sand

[jpapon]

Oh, please. I have no love for the Chinese government, but even I know that this is in no way unique to them.

For as long as there has been property, there have been thieves. The U.S. stole much of its industrial-revolution era technology from the U.K. Europe stole many of the ideas that brought about the renaissance from the Arabs. The Arabs stole much of this engineering knowledge from the Byzantine Romans. They in turn stole from anyone they could lay their blood covered hands on. That's how it works. How can people on Slashdot bitch about software patents, and then complain about Chinese theft of software?

They're ideas, goddamnit. They spread. That's why they're beautiful.

Re:He must be guilty!

[bsDaemon]

Douglas MacArthur has nothing to do with Joseph McCarthy. If you are going to complain, at least complain about the right thing.