20,000 Britons Approached By Chinese Agents On LinkedIn, Says MI5 Head (theguardian.com) 19
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: An estimated 20,000 Britons have been approached by Chinese state actors on LinkedIn in the hope of stealing industrial or technological secrets, the head of MI5 has said. Ken McCallum said industrial espionage was happening at "real scale," and he estimated that 10,000 UK businesses were at risk, particularly in artificial intelligence, quantum computing or synthetic biology where China was trying to gain a march. "Week by week, our teams detect massive amounts of covert activity by the likes of China in particular, but also Russia and Iran," the MI5 director general said ahead of a summit of domestic spy chiefs from the Five Eyes agencies hosted by the FBI in California. "Activity not aimed just at government or military secrets. Not even just aimed at our critical infrastructure but increasingly [at] promising startups -- innovative companies spun out of our universities, academic research itself, and people that understandably may not think national security is about them."
A key attack vector, McCallum said, was to try and steal information by Chinese actors posing as recruitment consultants on LinkedIn. "We think we're above 20,000 cases where that initial approach has been made online through sites of that sort," he said, compared to 10,000 two and a half years ago. [...] On Tuesday, the agency said it was aware of 20 instances of Chinese companies considering or pursuing use of "obfuscated investment, imaginative company structures" to circumvent regulations in order to gain access to technology developed by British companies and in universities. Details were scant but MI5 indicated it was aware of at least two Chinese companies trying to identify legal loopholes to access the sensitive technology of UK firms undetected, and another Chinese company acquiring research data stolen from a top UK university.
A key attack vector, McCallum said, was to try and steal information by Chinese actors posing as recruitment consultants on LinkedIn. "We think we're above 20,000 cases where that initial approach has been made online through sites of that sort," he said, compared to 10,000 two and a half years ago. [...] On Tuesday, the agency said it was aware of 20 instances of Chinese companies considering or pursuing use of "obfuscated investment, imaginative company structures" to circumvent regulations in order to gain access to technology developed by British companies and in universities. Details were scant but MI5 indicated it was aware of at least two Chinese companies trying to identify legal loopholes to access the sensitive technology of UK firms undetected, and another Chinese company acquiring research data stolen from a top UK university.
Re: (Score:3)
That's not a terrible idea but I'll flip the script on the head and say the right way to fight this is to not have your shit online for the entire world to see . I realize I'm tilting at windmills there, but LinkedIn is atrocious, by design there is no way to remove yourself from the search index. Literally everything a scammer needs to learn to socially engineer your organization can be found on LinkedIn if even a small minority of people therein are on that turd platform.
My HR department receives almo
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps the best way to fight this is to have MI5 or whoever create lots of false data to lead them up the wrong ally and sell that to them. So that if they do get any spies their information is drowned by massive amounts of bad information leaving them with a needle in a haystack situation.
I'm sure LinkedIn will love your idea of flooding their service with fake accounts belonging to spy agencies.
Fake accounts improve their stats. (Score:2)
actually, fake accounts improve their stats vs. potential investors.
Chinese state actors (Score:2)
And like any form of spam (Score:2)
A response rate of 1 in 20,000,000 is outstandingly good. Yawn.
I have been approached too (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Same here. I can definitely confirm. It's all (supposedly) women with Chinese names. All of their messages don't violate LinkedIn's spam terms and conditions, so whenever I report them, LinkedIn says there's nothing they can do about it. I wish there was an option to report widespread information gathering, because that is clearly what is happening.
swipe left (Score:3)
LinkedIn is an American Company and it's... (Score:2)
Web 2.0 platforms are fraud machines. They allow scammers ability to generate and control massive swarms of fake accounts in order to maintain the appearance that their platforms are still active. The reality is that most of these platforms are ghost towns and seem to be 90%+ bots.
Re: (Score:2)
LinkedIn is an American company being used to commit crimes against Americans on American soil. This problem is easily solved IN AMERICA.
Web 2.0 platforms are fraud machines. They allow scammers ability to generate and control massive swarms of fake accounts in order to maintain the appearance that their platforms are still active. The reality is that most of these platforms are ghost towns and seem to be 90%+ bots.
B-B-B-B-But if they did that they wouldn't be able to monetise your data without your permission... That's like Columnunism or somefink.
I'm surprised if it was only 20,000 UK workers approached by foreign state actors (erm, essentially spies but without The James Bondian/Mission Impossible fantasy worlds) over linked in. I suspect the MI5 head is keeping that number down to avoid it sounding as incredulous as the real number would be. Keep in mind there are 32.8 million people employed in the UK, 20K is
So all these women don't want to be my friend? (Score:3)
I happen to be a senior manager in a well-known tech organization these days and I've had four or five very similar connection requests on LinkedIn in the last six months or so. In each case, the profile has a photo of an attractive Asian woman, and they say in their introduction that they are new to my city and want to make friends.
I always thought they were scammers (such as pig butchers) since good-looking young ladies aren't typically looking to make friends with balding men at least 25 years their senior.
But, who knows, maybe they were spies? That's much cooler than thinking they were run of the mill scammers, hoping I would be a lonely soul who would get dragged into their scheme.
Re:So all these women don't want to be my friend? (Score:5, Funny)
There's a news article about this fascination that young Asian women have with middle-aged men:
https://www.theonion.com/asian... [theonion.com]
Boring (Score:1)
Winnie the Pooh doesn't have more important things for his citizens to worry about? Like their soon to be completely underwater economy? Or their birth rate crisis? Or the fact that their constructions and expansions have been a complete waste of time, effort, and money? Xi Jinping really is the stupidest Chinese person to ever exist. So weak. So lazy.
Do they have the reverse statistics? (Score:1)
Have many British agents have approached Chinese people on LinkedIn? Wondering how outraged I should be.