14 DAY TRIAL // The United States has decided to make the most ironic accusation in history by pointing the finger at the Chinese government and saying that it engages in cyber espionage.
The Justice Department has filed criminal charges against five hackers in the Chinese military, saying that they have stolen American trade secrets by using cyber espionage.
It looks like the Chinese were targeting six American companies in the nuclear power, metals and solar products industries. “This is a case alleging economic espionage by members of the Chinese military and represent the first-ever charges against a state actor for this type of hacking,” said Eric Holder, US Attorney General.
In an interview for NBC News, James Comey, FBI director, has said that the Chinese government has been trying to use cyber espionage for a long time in order to obtain economic advantage for its state-owned industries.
The charges, as mentioned, are quite ironic. Over the past year, reports based on leaked documents from the NSA indicate that the agency has spied on a lot of targets that could be considered economic.
For instance, Brazil’s Petrobras, a state-owned oil company can definitely be qualified as such, regardless of what the United States has claimed thus far. In fact, the Brazilian government hasn’t shied away from throwing the very same accusation of economic espionage that the United States is directing at China.
At the time, the NSA justified its snooping on Petrobras as a measure to make sure that everything was working properly from an economic point of view since the company’s failure could greatly impact the world and throw it into another crisis.
Furthermore, the NSA has also directed its spyglass towards other entities with economic impact, including the SWIFT, the global provider of secure financial messaging between banks, effectively gaining access to private information.
It is true, however, that the Chinese do their part of spying on the world and that hackers from this country are some of the most active and persistent in the world.
This time, however, the Chinese foreign ministry has denied any allegations and rejected suggestions that the Chinese were involved in these intrusions mentioned by the United States.
NBC quotes Marc Zwillinger, a computer security expert and former Justice Department lawyer, who claims that the only computers that are safe from the Chinese government these days are those that are turned off or unplugged.