China steps up spying on U.S. military

Li Shangfu (center), who was slapped with U.S. sanctions this week for buying arms from Russia, is director of the Equipment Development Department of China’s Central Military Commission. The department announced a database that will likely benefit from China’s theft of 22.1 million records on American federal workers, including those with security clearances, from the Office of Personnel Management in 2015. (Photo by: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press/File)

 

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is stepping up open-source spying on the U.S. military and other foreign militaries that will utilize artificial intelligence means.

According to a procurement notice from China’s Central Military Commission, the new database is a six-month project to set up an “Open Source Intelligence Database on Foreign Militaries.”

The revealing notice was published by the commission’s PLA Equipment Development Department, whose director, Lt. Gen. Li Shangfu, was slapped with U.S. sanctions this week for buying arms from Russia.

The database will likely benefit from China’s theft of 22.1 million records on American federal workers, including those with security clearances, from the Office of Personnel Management in 2015. Chinese hackers also stole an estimated 80 million records on Americans from health care insurance giant Anthem.

US spies voiced concerns about Fed database prior to massive hack

Until a few years ago, however, Scattered Castles, the database containing security clearance applications for the US Intelligence Community, was not connected to the OPM database. But in 2010, new legislation aiming to eliminate the growing backlog in processing security-clearance applications required that Scattered Castles be merged with the OPM database. The proposed move, which aimed to create a unified system for processing security clearances made sense in terms of eliminating bureaucratic overlap and reducing duplication within the federal apparatus.

With a series of major hacks, China builds a database on Americans

China is building massive databases of Americans’ personal information by hacking government agencies and U.S. health-care companies, using a high-tech tactic to achieve an age-old goal of espionage: recruiting spies or gaining more information on an adversary, U.S. officials and analysts say.

Groups of hackers working for the Chinese government have compromised the networks of the Office of Personnel Management, which holds data on millions of current and former federal employees, as well as the health insurance giant Anthem, among other targets, the officials and researchers said.

“They’re definitely going after quite a bit of personnel information,” said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer of ThreatConnect, a Northern Virginia cybersecurity firm. “We suspect they’re using it to understand more about who to target [for espionage], whether electronically or via human ­recruitment.”

Massive cyber attack hits US federal workers, probe focuses on China

To put this in perspective, roughly 95% of federal employees have been hit.

 

Washington: Hackers broke into US government computers, possibly compromising the personal data of 4 million current and former federal employees, with investigators probing whether the culprits were based in China, US officials said.

In the latest in a string of intrusions into US agencies’ high-tech systems, the US Office of Personnel Management suffered what appeared to be one of the largest breaches of information ever on government workers. The office handles employee records and security clearances.

Officers at US nuclear missile base suspended in illegal drugs case

Two officers whose hands were on the nation’s nuclear trigger have been suspended from duty for alleged possession of illegal drugs, Air Force officials told NBC News on Thursday.

The two ICBM missile launch officers are assigned to the 341st Air Wing at Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana and would be responsible for launching nuclear-armed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles.