Did China Hack The CIA In A Massive Intelligence Breach From 2010 To 2012? (ibtimes.com)

schwit1 quotes the International Business Times: Both the CIA and the FBI declined to comment on reports saying the Chinese government killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 CIA sources from 2010 to 2012 and dismantled the agency's spying operations in the country. It is described as one of the worst intelligence breaches in decades, current and former American officials told the New York Times.

Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be in contact with foreign sources. The Times reported Saturday citing former American officials from the final weeks of 2010 till the end of 2012, the Chinese killed up to 20 CIA sources.

Comments

Strategic competitors

[Beeftopia]

China and Russia are strategic competitors. We should strive to have good relations with both, enhance partnership at points of shared interest, but also realize they are competitors. And for cryin' out loud, we should not be outsourcing a vast amount of our manufacturing base and knowledge to a strategic competitor. Enhancing economic partnership, certainly. Giving up our manufacturing base to one or the other is madness.

The pundits tell us we're a smart advanced country, manufacturing is beneath us. However, countries like China, Japan, and Germany, with national IQs equal to or greater than ours, cultivate manufacturing. So there's that.

Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a special combination of arrogance and stupidity to believe that the U.S. can infiltrate and spy on every other intelligence organization on the planet, but somehow nobody is able to do the same to us using the same security vulnerabilities we leave in software specifically so people can be spied upon.

So yes, I do believe the CIA was breached.

Re:Probably

[ShanghaiBill]

If this was a result of a "software vulnerability" then a lot of people at the CIA need to be fired and/or jailed. There is absolutely no reason that a list of double agents should be stored online or even on a computer at all. The "need to know" actual identifying information should be limited to the each asset's direct handler. Even the handler's boss doesn't need to know. Instead, the asset himself can be given secondary contact information and a code word to use if the main handler goes silent. Knowledge segmentation is standard spook tradecraft. How could they possibly screw up something so simple so badly?

The NSA's role?

[whoever57]

Perhaps if the NSA concentrated on cyber security instead of cyber attacks, this might not have happened?

Re:You'll never be in media with that attitude.

[ShanghaiBill]

For no particular reason we cannot have headlines written like that for at least the next 4 years...

Proper Headlines:
Massive Chinese Data Breach Cripples CIA
Administration in Chaos Over Chinese Hack
Did Russia Pass Hacked Information to China
Crippling CIA Hack Leaked, Did Trump Know?
Trump Failed to Act On Chinese Hacking Allegations

None of those are "proper" headlines, because there is no actual evidence that they are true. TFA does not contain a single named or quoted source. It consists entirely of rumors, conjecture, and innuendo.

The reason that Betteridge's Law of Headlines is generally accurate is that using a question as a headline is a great crutch for weak journalism.