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| China's J-31/FC-31 Stealth Fighter |
by Reuben F. Johnson
On 28 June 2014, a Chinese businessman based in Canada was arrested on the charge of stealing information about a raft of U.S. military aircraft and weapon systems. This particular case of industrial espionage was described by the U.S. Justice Department as being “unusual for the tremendous amounts of data that is involved.” According to e-mails that were obtained by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “tremendous amounts” came to more than 65 gigabytes over one specifically identified two-year period and involved “dozens of U.S. military projects.”
The businessman in question, Su Bin, finally agreed a plea deal with the U.S. government in March of this year in which he admitted using his company, Lode Technology, to steal data in U.S. military aircraft and weapons programs for years. Court documents also detail how he then collaborated with contacts inside of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to sell this information to various Chinese military aircraft R&D and production centers.
The data is reported to have been stolen from different computer systems included detailed information on the Boeing C-17 Globemaster cargo lifter and two jet fighter programs for which Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor—the F-22A Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).
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| China's Y-20 Cargo Aircraft |
Su had two accomplices working back in the PRC who were distributing and securing payments for the information that was being provided to various Chinese design centers. The two have never been identified in court documents, but numerous media reports and other government documents have identified them as officers of one the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) cyber attack units.
More than a year before the arrest of Su, a prominent U.S. cyber security firm, Mandiant, identified the existence of PLA Unit 61398, which belongs to the Second Bureau of the PLA General Staff’s Third Department. The unit, based in the Pudong district of Shanghai, is one of what Mandiant estimates total 20 or more PLA cyber-warfare special operations units with the mission of attacking both foreign government and industry computer networks.
Read the full story at AINonline