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German Intelligence Warns of Increased Chinese Cyberspying (apnews.com)
The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency has warned that China allegedly is using social networks to try to cultivate lawmakers and other officials as sources. From a report: Hans-Georg Maassen said his agency, known by its German acronym BfV, believes more than 10,000 Germans have been targeted by Chinese intelligence agents posing as consultants, headhunters or researchers, primarily on the social networking site LinkedIn. "This is a broad-based attempt to infiltrate in particular parliaments, ministries and government agencies," Maassen said.
They should not be allowed to trade with us.
Corporatism != Free Market
Und die Deutscher STASI 2.0 sind ihre besten freunden... What a joke Germany has become, only Germans allowed to spy on Germans... Oh and the other eyes who we play with, but others are a big NEIN. Democratic governments need to lead by example before anyone cares about what their stooges of the hour say.
Next tell me water is wet, I'm waiting on that breaking news with great anticipation!
Intelligence services do intelligence and counter-intelligence work on behalf of domestic political and corporate interests. Specific instances of this are made public when convenient for propaganda purposes.
Unless you really think none of the EU nations is spying on the Chinese...
It has been there all the time. They are just taking a different tack. It is long past time for the west, esp nato nations, to restore the security approach that we had during the last cold war. After all, both China and Russia see themselves in a cold war with the west.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
we'll have to do another whole investigation in to the Trump family ties to Gina.
I know what they can do. Hire a bunch of people to bad mouth China and Russia at every opportunity. Have them try to convince people that when 'The West' does something, it's good. But if Evil China or Russia do it, it's bad bad bad.
They could even call them the WindBourne 2 cent army. They can just copy and past all your ant-China comments far and wide.
Germans very nice people - would never hurt anyone
No need for social networks either, malware infested Windows computers used by dumb fucks do pretty well.
Everybody does it. But China is bad.
When, not if, they reverse engineer the Cambridge Analytica approach, they will be able to use the network to engineer elections, policy, and spending for any number of nations on the planet.
They are in it "for the long game" and nobody else is. Their battlefield they currently fight on is best described in this way:
"What if there was a war, and only one side came"
Every American politician must fight with no less than half of their time, money, and energy for re-election every two years. Their decisions are forced to that time-scale. The Chinese leadership has no equally vast constraint on vision, resources, or execution.
US intelligence is spying on internet since the introduction of Web 1.0.
Here's the thing. This claim is win-win for the agency making it. Social media is a giant mechanism by which nations can spy not only on each other but also on their own people, very cost-effectively. So Chinese spying may or may not be a serious concern--it's in the interests of German intelligence to play it up as much as possible. It will get them support to increase their own budget and operations...
AND it will encourage political support for much stronger enforcement of "real name policies" and the connection of online IDs to state-issued IDs and employers.
The second half of this is probably inevitable if we want to prevent social engineering attacks not only by nation-states but also by individuals and for corporate espionage. So unfortunately, it's happening.
Well, the obvious solution is to put back doors in everything. That'll keep them out.
And that is why I put on my resume: Never had a Linkedin account and never will. Along with of course will not accept bitcoin as payment.
Funny Fact, post a slightly anti-russian comment on german forums and you will get swarmed by hundreds of pro-russian trolls.
Post whatever about anybody else and noone cares.
China is just doing the old game of "intelligence gathering". At least they are not meddling with local politics.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Oh wait, the Germans said it. Better listen to them, not that there is anything left to steal.
Of course the Chinese are spying, as do many other nations.
But at least, if you buy Chinese hardware from Chinese traders, you usually end up with only one backdoor in your hardware - the one mandated by the Chinese gouvernment.
If you buy US hardware, there instead will a multitude of backdoors come with it, readily installed: One installed by the US brand owner, for all sorts of commercial reasons. One installed by the Chinese manufacturer, during manufacturing, on behalf of the Chinese agencies. And at least one installed by the NSA during shipment.
The BND and NSA want to spy so they have weak junk open networks. Thinking no other such nation has skills.
Domestic police want to spy on all the new random people just wondering around.
Interesting people the police know nothing about and who have no valid documents.
Collect it all only works if the domestic gov/mil/telco networks are secure and only searchable by a nations police and security services.
Opening the "internet" to the world and then setting crypto keys as junk to spy on everyone domestically will just allow other groups to spy on the same networks.
Staging servers that the rest of the world can see are not useful. Other nations just copy your most advanced gov/mil malware.
That is then used to spy on your own mil/gov.
It like Enigma all over again. Your codes are not secure, stop trusting your junk communications networks. Too many other nations are again collecting everything in real time.
Once the trap door and backdoors are open and the keys copied its a bit strange to "warn" people of the results of gov mandated junk encryption and wide open networks. If you want security keep your networks secure.
If the networks are wide open junk to support collect it all, a lot of other people, criminals, communists, cults, faiths, govs, spies, mil will be collecting for free too.
What lets the NSA, GCHQ, BND, MI6, CIA in lets every other nation, faith group, mil, gov, criminal group and their spies in too.
Their collection will result in advanced social engineering of people in the gov, mil, NGO and civil society.
A kind of different https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that keeps a weak gov in place run by other nations rather than just supporting a direct coup.
Encrypt. Or do not encrypt. There is no secure social media.
How to fix this. Stop with the junk US encryption. Too many people are getting into secure network for free.
Learn how to spy on all the interesting people as a set of people who are in the same faith, communists. That stops the collect it all work load of having to spy on everyone in Germany.
Be like the GCHQ was for Ireland, spy on all interesting people all the time. Use special forces/police when the spying results are found.
Less like the Stasi with huge files on everyone that cant be search for useful information in real time.
Secure your gov, mil and political networks again. Spies, faith groups and criminals working deep in gov,mil, security services need to be found.
The internet is not the problem, its just the method to get free information on who to spy on. Stop uploading information about people who are connected to your gov/mil to for other nations to read about on the internet.
Stop publishing so much about your gov, mil, politicians, think tanks, consultants on line.
The West was smart and did not publish such information for the Stasi in the 1970-80's. Stop doing it now for free and giving everything away for other spies, faith groups, communists and governments now.
Stop hiring spies that are working for faith groups, other nations, other nations mil, having contact with communists. They don't need work deep in the gov/mil/police. All they are doing is spying.
Stop warning and start investigating who is spying.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They don't like competition
I finger my ass all day, you insensitive clod!
Chinese farm trolls sure do hate Trump.
can. Look it up and be amazed.