Contractors Hack Put to Rest

The case of Su Bin, a Chinese National indicted for helping the PLA steal documents from defense contractors has finally been put to rest with a plea agreement that sends him to jail for 46 months.  With the parole and time-served provisions, he won't be there too long.

What he did was help individuals in the Chinese Army steal information from contractors - at least Boeing and Lockheed that were named in the LATimes report of his arrest.  These were documents related to the F-35, F-22 and C-17, some of our newer aircraft.  There is a lot to this story, but the aspect I was interested in was the availability of systems containing this kind of information from the Internet.  It was certainly sensitive and deserving of protection, yet Su was able to help the Chinese government get to those documents by using old access authorizations.  These are two defense contractors that contract with other companies to sell security services for protection of business secrets, yet they cannot protect their own.  How it is possible for flight data tests to be available from the Internet is a question we should ask of the Program Managers of these programs.  This is the kind of theft that the government needs to get some action on preventing.  The Chinese will take anything they can get their hands on so that part is not so surprising.  The fact they could is what is really amazing.

It reminds me of a counter-measures person from another country who told me a story about how the counter-measures business was so lucrative where he came from.  His government was always wary of US satellites getting data about what they were testing so they told the developers never to test in the open where they could be seen.  They did anyway.  He laughed when I asked him why.  It seems that both sides of the business tested where the other country could see what was going on.  Each side  knew what the other was working on and came up with new counter-measures for each new one that the other side developed.  It kept both of them in business.  Perhaps we have a valuable lesson in that conspiracy.