Global articles on espionage, spying, bugs, and other interesting topics.

Fears of spying hinder China Mobile license

China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile provider, applied in October for a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide service between China and the United States and to build facilities on American soil.

Officials from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department’s national security division are concerned that the move would give the company access to physical infrastructure and Internet traffic that might allow China to spy more easily on the U.S. government and steal intellectual property from American companies, according to people familiar with the process who declined to be identified because the deliberations are secret.

Those officials, known collectively as “Team Telecom,” review FCC applications by foreign-owned companies. They could advise the FCC not to issue the license, but may instead demand a signed agreement designed to satisfy security concerns, the people said.

The review is being led by the Justice Department, which declined to comment, as did the FBI and DHS.

A move to block the license could provoke a lawsuit by China Mobile, officials said. But lately, the U.S. government’s focus on cyber espionage has sharpened considerably.

China Mobile, which has nearly 670 million subscribers, is not applying to provide domestic U.S. telephone or Internet service. But traffic from U.S. carriers, such as Verizon Communications Inc. or ATT Inc., could be routed to the China-owned network should a license be granted.

“Suddenly, you’ve got a perfect ability to exfiltrate information out of the country,” said Scott Aken, a former FBI cyber security investigator.

A U.S. representative for China Mobile, who declined to be quoted by name, said the company is cooperating with Team Telecom’s inquiries and expects to satisfy any concerns through a national security agreement. The firm declined to address allegations about Chinese spying.

Team Telecom’s review of China Mobile’s application is complicated by the fact that two other Chinese government-owned firms, China Telecom and China Unicom, were granted similar licenses in 2002 and 2003, respectively, well before Chinese cyber espionage was viewed as a pressing concern. Both carry phone and Internet traffic between the U.S. and China.

In neither case did Team Telecom require a national security agreement that specifies, for example, how the company must protect U.S. classified information that could traverse its network.

In recent years, Team Telecom has required foreign-owned firms to sign extremely detailed agreements.

One signed in September by Level 3 Communications, a Broomfield, Colo., carrier, requires the company to provide the manufacturer name and model number of all equipment relating to the undersea cables used to carry traffic to and from the United States. According to the FCC, 43.5 percent of the company is indirectly owned by foreign interests.

U.S. officials in recent months have warned repeatedly that cyber espionage, in some cases authorized at the highest levels of the Chinese government, has become a grave threat to U.S. economic and national security.

Tens of billions of dollars in U.S. intellectual property has been stolen, much of it through hacking originating in China, U.S. intelligence officials have said. In addition, China has obtained national defense information, the officials have said.

On April 8, 2010, China Telecom, China’s largest fixed-line telephone company, rerouted 15 percent of the world’s Internet’s traffic through Chinese servers for 18 minutes, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

China Telecom denied hijacking Internet traffic, but it did not explain how erroneous instructions were issued in a global Internet routing system based largely on trust.

In February 2011, the U.S. government blocked a deal by another Chinese telecom company, Huawei Technologies, to purchase 3Leaf Systems, an insolvent technology firm based in Santa Clara, Calif. Huawei is privately owned, but American officials alleged that it has ties to the Chinese military.

Last month, Australia barred Huawei from bidding for work on its national broadband network because of security concerns. Also last month, Symantec Corp. unwound its joint venture with Huawei, reportedly over concerns that the U.S. government would stop sharing information with Symantec.

The House intelligence committee is investigating the role of Chinese telecommunications companies in espionage, with a focus on Huawei and ZTE Corp., which makes switches, routers and other products.

Sean McGurk, a former senior DHS cyber security official, said China Mobile’s entrance into the U.S. market “would pose a concern to most people. We’re not really sure, not only where the information is flowing, but what potentially is being left behind.”

Utah industrial espionage case settled with plea deal

A scientist indicted in U.S. District Court for allegedly emailing trade secrets from a Utah drug company to his brother-in-law in India has pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful access to a protected computer.

The case against Prabhu Mohapatra, 42, of North Logan, marks the first time an industrial espionage case has been filed against a Utah defendant, according to the FBI.

In exchange for Mohapatra’s plea, 25 other charges were dismissed, including those related to the theft of trade secrets.

He faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 28 by Judge Clark Waddoups.

A senior scientist at Logan’s Frontier Scientific Inc., Mohapatra admitted accessing a company computer to obtain the chemical recipe for Meso-tetraphenylporphine, according to court documents.

He then sent the recipe to his brother-in-law, who was employed by a competing company, according to the initial indictment.

Mohapatra, who worked at Frontier Scientific from 2009 to 2011, was caught after a co-worker noticed suspicious behavior and reported it to management, court documents state.

Investigating espionage, security sweep at naval base

The Canadian military has evacuated staff from the Halifax naval intelligence facility where a sailor accused of espionage was working before his arrest.

The Department of National Defence said authorities are conducting a security sweep of HMCS Trinity to see whether this confidential communication centre has been compromised.

Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle was charged Jan. 16 under Canada’s Security of Information Act and faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

Experts are scanning Trinity, a naval communications and surveillance centre, for evidence of espionage or mechanisms designed to leak information to outsiders.

“The place is being investigated …. [for] software, hardware, bugs, the works,” a military official said.

Trinity staff have been temporarily moved a few kilometres away.

“As part of a normal and prudent business contingency plan, personnel belonging to elements of HMCS Trinity have been relocated to 12 Wing Shearwater for an undetermined period of time as a security precaution,” said Captain Karina Holder, spokeswoman for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, who commands the military police.

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Army hearing will be scheduled in attempted-espionage case

ANCHORAGE — U.S. Army officials could decide in February when to schedule a court hearing for an Alaska-based soldier charged with attempted espionage.

Army officials say 22-year-old Spc. William Colton Millay of Owensboro, Ky., transmitted national-defense information to someone he believed was a foreign-intelligence agent.

Officials have declined to say what country Millay believed the so-called agent represented. Millay, who faces life imprisonment, was observed during the espionage investigation and no damage occurred, officials said.

Millay, a military police officer, also is charged with communicating defense information, issuing false statements, failing to obey regulations and soliciting a fellow service member at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage to get classified material.

The Army’s equivalent of a preliminary hearing may be scheduled next month and could lead to a general court-martial, similar to a criminal trial in the civilian court system. But it’s too soon to know when the preliminary hearing actually will be held, Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll said.

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U.S. Prosecutors Accuse China of Industrial Espionage Plot Against DuPont

Liew attorney Thomas Nolan maintained in court that Liew had only possessed publicly available information.

“There is nothing at all illegal about that conduct,” Nolan said. “What is illegal is if he uses trade secrets.”

Liew paid at least two former DuPont engineers for assistance in designing chloride-route titanium dioxide, also known as TiO2, according to the indictment. DuPont is the world’s largest producer of the white pigment used to make a range of white-tinted products, including paper, paint and plastics.

The United States has identified industrial spying as a significant and growing threat to the nation’s prosperity. In a government report released last November, authorities cited China as “the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.”

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