China Outs US Hackers for Attack, a New Frontier in Spy Games

China's outing of alleged US National Security Agency hackers marks a major escalation in the ongoing tit-for-tat between Chinese and American intelligence agencies, according to analysts. From a report: Chinese authorities Tuesday said three NSA employees hacked the Asian Winter Games held this year in Harbin, accusing them of targeting systems that held vast amounts of personal information on people involved in the event. The hacks "severely endangered the security of China's critical information infrastructure, national defense, finance, society, production, as well as citizens' personal information," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters.

While the US has repeatedly published names of alleged Chinese hackers and filed criminal charges against them, China has historically refrained from making similar accusations against American spies. Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at the cyber firm Sophos' Secureworks unit, said the development may signal a broader policy change from Chinese security agencies, with allegations of US cyberattacks becoming more specific and timely. "This is an escalation in China's experimentation with 'name and shame' policies for the alleged perpetrators of cyberattacks, mirroring US pursuit of a similar policy for a number of years now," said Pilling.

Is it an escalation? Or a mistake?

[taustin]

They've never "name and shamed" US spies in the past because to do so, they'd have to admit the attacks were successful. This damages their self image of superiority over the west, which can be very dangerous to the leadership of the country.

Are they stepping up the conflict? Or did they blink (like they did when they started shopping for - not very successfully - allies in the trade war)?

Re: Is it an escalation? Or a mistake?

[topham]

This is called diplomacy.

China is entirely prepared to out the US dirty laundry.

They (the US) might want to consider what's in the laundry basket.

Re:

[alvinrod]

Most of the U.S. population doesn't care that our own government is effectively spying on its own citizens. Do you think anyone here is going to give a damn about things we've done to other countries? The problem with bean spilling is that it doesn't incentivize the other side to stay quiet about what they know.

Personally I'm all for it. It's sad that it would take a foreign government to give our citizens the kind of transparency that we deserve for our own government, but I'll take what I can get. I do

Re:

[cusco]

I don't think that China really gives a rip about the opinion of the US public, they're well aware that we're the most propagandized population on the planet. Their intended audience would be the rest of the world, especially other targeted countries.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

China is entirely prepared to out the US dirty laundry.
They (the US) might want to consider what's in the laundry basket.

Bunches of dirty, orange-colored face towels?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not possible to shame Republicans.
The Presidents of America and El Salvador both joked together in the Whitehouse on national television about keeping an innocent person imprisoned in a notorious jail.
Sickening to any observer. Well unless they're Republicans. You can't shame these kinds of people.

Re:

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

They've never "name and shamed" US spies in the past because [...] This damages their self image

LOL, please, it damages nothing - propaganda about concealed operations against "the people" have always been a part of the "official" public image of the USA in the part of the world that developed behind the Iron Curtain. There is even a special name for it and you can easily see how it came about by looking at what languages in Wikipedia have it - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Besides, how does exposing an operation like the alleged one in TFS would be "damaging"? How is a successful 'acking of a low-

Re:

[larryjoe]

Or did they blink (like they did when they started shopping for - not very successfully - allies in the trade war)?

It's far too early to declare winners and losers in the global trade war. No one knows what Trump's trade and tariffs policy is. Not even Trump. He might know today, but he usually doesn't tell tomorrow's Trump what's happening.

The small countries like Taiwan and Vietnam are keen to kowtow to Trump because they have no choice. These countries sort of blinked because blinking for them is largely inconsequential, i.e., Taiwan's lowering of their world-leading lowest 1.7% tariffs is insignificant for Taiwa

False flag

[RogueWarrior65]

Make a lot of noise over here so that over there you can get all sorts of intelligence.

This is a war US can't win

[migos]

China has complete control of public opinion inside the country. In addition they can sway public opinion in most mandarin speaking population via social media blitz. China is using this chance to step up to become the new leader in regional trade, creating pacts and alliances without the US. For a while, there was a lot of talk about USD not being reserve currency but that fizzled out especially post pandemic when China's economy was in deep trouble. 5 months ago Economist cover says US economy is envy of the world. US economy pulled away from rest of the G7 and there was no talk of USD being replaced. Within 2 months everything changed. US lost all soft power.

Re:

[cusco]

You could change China for the US and Mandarin for English in your first two sentences and be more correct. The US government in cooperation with the Madison Avenue advertising agencies and the media behemoths have made us probably the most propagandized people on the planet. At least the Chinese people know that most any pronouncement from their government is going to be designed to present themselves in the best light possible. As a Soviet general told writer Farley Mowat, "The difference between US pr