As U.S., allies condemn Chinese cyber attacks, report exposes their use of Pegasus spyware
Nick Schifrin:
Yes, so this is a grand jury, indicted Chinese intelligence agents for a worldwide hacking, a worldwide cyber espionage, economic espionage campaign.
The Department of Justice says it was designed to aid Chinese-sponsored and Chinese-owned companies inside China, to give them stolen technology, so the companies themselves wouldn’t have to create it themselves, a kind of shortcut to good technology.
And this is the FBI notice for the four hackers. They say these hackers targeted trade secrets, intellectual property, other high-value information from companies, universities, and governments across multiple sectors from the NIH to Navy submarines to Ebola research.
And this was all over the world, Judy, from the U.S., to the U.K., to Cambodia, to South Africa, exactly the kind of action that the U.S. and its allies are calling out today.
Now, when it comes to China, we took a look at the Chinese nationalist tabloid Global Times’ response. They accused the U.S. of stirring up a new geopolitical dispute by turning cyber frictions into major conflicts.