Tag: Spies

It is amazing to me that something so insecure was used to communicate with spies in Iran and China.  The US military gets non-stop information security training about using commercial websites and social media and here is American intelligence agencies operating an entire spy network on one:

Dozens of American spies were killed in Iran and China after a flawed communications service that allowed foreign foes to see what the agents were up to using Google, official sources have claimed.

Between 2009 and 2013 the US Central Intelligence Agency suffered a “catastrophic” secret communications failure in a website used by officers and their field agents around the world to speak to each other, according to a report in Yahoo News, which heard from 11 former intelligence and government officials about the previously unreported disaster.

“We’re still dealing with the fallout,” said one former national security official. “Dozens of people around the world were killed because of this.”

The internet-based communications platform was first used in the Middle East to communicate with soldiers in war zones and had not been intended for widespread use but due to its ease of use and efficacy, it was adopted by agents despite its lack of sophistication, the sources claimed.

Cracks only began to show when Iran, angered that the government under Barack Obama had discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapon factory, went out with a fine tooth comb to find moles.

It discovered the existence of one of the websites used by US agents using Google. US officials believe that Iranian spies were able to use Google as a search tool to find secret CIA websites, unbeknown to those using them.

By 2011, Iran had infiltrated the CIA spy network and in May it announced that they had broken up a 30-strong ring of American spies.

Some informants were executed and others imprisoned as a result, the sources claimed.

This was corroborated by a report on ABC news at the time, which referred to a compromised communications system after a tip off from the CIA.

It is about time that something was being done about China’s economic espionage activities:

US agents have arrested a top Beijing intelligence official for allegedly attempting to steal trade secrets from GE Aviation and other US aerospace companies after luring the suspect to Belgium in what the US Justice Department called “an unprecedented extradition”.

Xu Yanjun, who also uses the names Qu Hui and Zhang Hui, was extradited to the US on Tuesday with assistance from Belgian authorities for seeking “to steal trade secrets and other sensitive information from an American company that leads the way in aerospace”, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a Justice Department announcement on Wednesday.

Xu, a senior officer with China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), appeared in federal court in Cincinnati on Wednesday, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. He could be given a prison sentence of up to 25 years in addition to fines if charged and convicted, the Justice Department said.

“Beginning in at least December 2013 and continuing until his arrest, Xu targeted certain companies inside and outside the United States that are recognised as leaders in the aviation field,” the Justice Department said in its announcement of the arrest.

“He identified experts who worked for these companies and recruited them to travel to China, often initially under the guise of asking them to deliver a university presentation.”  [South China Morning Post]

You can read more at the link, but you would think that personnel working for defense contractors would understand that anyone approaching them from China and especially if they are inviting to them to China is likely an intelligence agent.  These companies need to do a better job protecting their intellectual property because this arrest is going to do nothing to slow down China’s economic espionage.

Via a reader tip comes news that Senator Diane Feinstein had a driver that worked for her for nearly 20 years that was a Chinese spy:

A staffer in U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco office was fired a few years back after being linked to Chinese spying in the Bay Area.

According to a Politico Magazine story on Silicon Valley espionage, the Feinstein staffer was suspected of providing political intelligence — but nothing classified — to his handlers, with one former intelligence official telling author Zach Dorfman that the suspected informant was “run” by officials based at the local Chinese Consulate.

A local source who knew about the incident confirmed to us that the FBI showed up at Feinstein’s office in Washington, D.C., about five years ago to alert the then-chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that her driver was being investigated for possible Chinese spying.

“Dianne was mortified,” said our source, who spoke to us only on condition he not be named.

Besides driving her around when she was in California, the staffer also served as gofer in her San Francisco office and as a liaison to the Asian American community, even attending Chinese Consulate functions for the senator.  [SF Chronicle]

You can read more at the link, but the US media has definitely done a good job keeping this quiet.  However, it has now come out and of course President Trump has jumped on this news since Senator Feinstein is a leading Democrat involved in investigating Trump over Russian spying.

Tragic is an understatement. https://t.co/6je2EM4u3i

— tomcoyner (@tomcoyner) January 17, 2018

It will be interesting to see if through CCTV or witnesses that the US military investigators will be able to track down who left the propaganda on the US bases:

U.S. Forces Korea is warning servicemembers on the peninsula to stay alert to potential insider threats after North Korean propaganda appeared on American bases.

The 8th Army reported that propaganda leaflets were discovered at Seoul’s Yongsan Garrison Thursday, shortly after a North Korean soldier defected across the heavily fortified border just north of the South Korean capital.

In an alert posted later that day on USFK’s Facebook page, officials said a significant number of North Korean propaganda leaflets and CDs had been placed at strategic locations on multiple U.S. military installations in South Korea.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if the propaganda was left by a sympathetic South Korean leftist with base access instead of a North Korean spy.

There were reports out there that Kim Jong-nam was running short on cash in Macau so a US intelligence agency trying to take advantage of this seems possible.  It also seems very possible that this would give Kim Jong-nam the excuse he needed to take out his brother as well:

KIM Jong Nam’s alleged ties with a US intelligence agency contact may have been the reason behind his spy novel-like assassination, Malaysian authorities said.

According to Japanese daily The Asahi Shimbun, Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was carrying US$120,000 when he was killed in February at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (klia2) and is believed to have received the money from the contact.

Malaysian investigators said Jong Nam had met with an American man who is believed to have links with a US intelligence agency during his eight-day trip in the Southeast Asian country. This, they said, may have prompted North Korea to silence Jong Nam.

Quoting unnamed sources, The Asahi Shimbun report said Jong Nam received the money during his time in Malaysia and had not planned to declare the cash when leaving the country. The authorities also said there were no records of Jong Nam making any large cash withdrawals from Malaysia.

A check of Jong Nam’s belongings, however, revealed wads of cash – all in US currency and in four bundles of US$100 bills – in his black carry-on bag,  [Asian Correspondent]

You can read more at the link.

Female Spies and Poison Darts — North Korea´s Cloak-and-Dagger History https://t.co/pbb88MkEft

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) February 15, 2017

Here is an interesting video published by the FBI warning Americans of how Chinese intelligence recruits people to work for them:

I thought the video was pretty well done and the lessons learned from it are applicable to more than just intelligence recruitment by the Chinese.

This looks to me to just be a psychological operation being carried out by North Korea in the wake of the THAAD decision:

North Korea has resumed the broadcasting of encrypted numbers, a method used in the past to send messages to spies operating in South Korea, a government source said Tuesday.

The source said that propaganda radio station Radio Pyongyang aired a 12-minute shortwave segment last week during which a female announcer read out numbers on what seemed to be from a book. The broadcast started in the early hours of Friday morning and marks the first time Seoul picked up on such communication from the North in 16 years.

The North halted all such broadcasting after the first inter-Korean summit in June 2000.

The encrypted number system, a relic of the Cold War espionage age, requires the sender and the receiver to have access to the same book and other types of reference materials so orders can be handed down by mentioning a page and the position of a word on that. This was a favored method employed by the reclusive country to contact and give orders to spies that infiltrated the South.

The coded radio broadcast began at 00:45 a.m. with a female announcer saying, “starting now, I will give review work to No. 27 exploration agents.”

The announcer then said, “on page 459 number 35, on page 913 number 55, on page 135 number 86, on page 257 number 2,” followed by more numbers.

South Korean intelligence authorities are reportedly scrambling to find out why Pyongyang resumed this type of communication, particularly in the digital era when it could have simply given out orders via the internet.

The revelation has put the Seoul government on alert over possible provocations that can be committed by the North’s agents living in the South.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but if North Korea was giving orders to anyone it would probably be the leftist instigators pushing lies about the THAAD radar.

I would not be surprised at all if hundreds of North Korean spies are active in South Korea, heck some of them operate right out in the open:

South Korea’s military counterintelligence agency arrested eight civilians suspected of passing military secrets to North Korea.

The suspects were under investigation, according to South Korean lawmaker Lee Wan-young, who attended a closed-door parliamentary briefing on Friday, Newsis reported.

The first four defendants were arrested more than a year ago in May 2015 on charges of espionage and sharing South Korean military intelligence with contacts in the North.

The suspects were found guilty of spying and are “all civilians who made contact with South Korean military personnel for the purposes of extracting army secrets, and to deliver them to North Korea,” Lee said.

Another four suspects arrested in 2016 are under separate investigations on similar charges, local news service News 1 reported.

The most recent round of arrests also involved suspects who attempted to win the trust of military officers to procure classified information, Lee said.

The information that was passed to the North include details on military facilities and “other data,” according to the South Korean lawmaker.

Cases of espionage among South Koreans are rare, but according to a former spy and defector in 2015, North Korean spies are operating in the “hundreds.”

Pyongyang has previously used spies to infiltrate the South and instruct them to commit suicide if caught.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.