or-politics.org
December 3, 2015
The US government says Chinese government entities were behind the massive data breach of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) a year ago, targeting the records of 22 million federal workers.
During his visit, which is due to end on Thursday, Guo will meet Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Xinhua state news agency said on Sunday, reports Reuters.
However, U.S. officials have said privately they believe Chinese government entities were behind the breach, which involved the compromise of sensitive personal data submitted to OPM by applicants for U.S. government security clearances, as well as field reports generated by security investigators. “They said there couldn’t be any progress [in cyber-talks, which the Chinese pulled out of] until the indictments were withdrawn and we promised not to do them again”. It’s a theory, with the unclear intent of why a private hacker would breach government websites of another country.
Guo pledged China would work with the U.S.to push forward the construction of the cyber law enforcement cooperation mechanism based on “the principles of law-abiding, reciprocity, honest and pragmatism”.
While there were rumors of the United States putting forth sanctions against China, the former held back, with a USA official citing the decision not to impose sanctions was for better diplomacy.
A high-ranking USA government official told The Washington Post, “We have been clear with the Chinese government that we are watching to ensure their words are matched by actions”.
The government says it’s nearly done mailing out notifications to people whose information was stolen, but it’s hard to verify how many people have received them because some may have gotten lost in the mail or been sent to old addresses. The hackers also targeted USA air traffic control systems, which are considered likely targets of China in a future cyber war.
More than 19 3PLA units have been linked by NSA to cyber attacks.
Chinese state media has now reported that arrests in the case have been made in the country, but that those accused are not state sponsored.
According to Harris’s research on the US National Security Agency (NSA) and cyber security, he said the NSA has spent a lot of money buying software from computer companies and developing its own software in-house to solve the attribution problem.
The cyber security agency CrowdStrike revealed in October that Chinese hacking continued unabated after the summit agreement.
