14 DAY TRIAL // Reuters has uncovered an interesting connection between the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Unit 61398, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) unit believed to be behind numerous cyber espionage campaigns.
A number of research papers written by experts of Unit 61398 in collaboration with professors from the university have been uncovered.
Reuters highlights that it’s uncertain if the academics who worked on these papers are directly linked to the espionage operations of the military unit.
However, such work relationships are uncommon in other countries where university professors are not so eager to cooperate with intelligence gathering units.
The university and Xue Zhi, the vice-president of Shanghai Jiao Tong's School of Information Security Engineering, whose name appears in a 2007 paper on network monitoring systems along with the one of a PLA researcher, have declined to comment.