CCP Actions In The US And Around The World
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, was charged on Tuesday with acting on behalf of the Chinese regime and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), federal prosecutors said.
Sun, 41, and her husband, Chris Hu, 40, were arrested on Tuesday morning at their home on Long Island.
In July, the FBI searched the address but didn’t release details.
Sun was also charged with visa fraud, alien smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, while Hu was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, bank fraud, and misuse of means of identification.
The couple is scheduled to appear before United States Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo later on Tuesday, the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.
www.theepochtimes.com
Sun, 41, and her husband, Chris Hu, 40, were arrested on Tuesday morning at their home on Long Island.
In July, the FBI searched the address but didn’t release details.
Sun was also charged with visa fraud, alien smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, while Hu was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, bank fraud, and misuse of means of identification.
The couple is scheduled to appear before United States Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo later on Tuesday, the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.
Former Top Aide of Hochul Charged With Spying for Beijing
Linda Sun, who worked for Hochul and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was accused of being an undeclared agent for the Chinese regime while working for the politicians.
Massive Chinese Cyberattack Is a Disaster of Unimaginable Proportions
Using a security loophole that allows the US government access to anybody's electronic traffic, Chinese hackers gained access to an unknown quantity (perhaps all) of internet traffic on American networks. In an exclusive report in Saturday's Wall Street Journal the secret breach was revealed.
The attack SOUNDS like the hackers could potentially have access to everything that crosses certain networks by using backdoor access that the US government mandates to permit wiretapping when authorized by a warrant. In other words, there is a built-in insecurity to the networking systems in order to allow government officials to tap your data. The Chinese got access to the backdoor.
The wording here is a little vague, and I think intentionally so, about whether the Chinese had access ONLY to data that the US government was wiretapping. That seems impossible, given that the access to wiretapping abilities is not limited to splicing wires or something like that. It is a function of software, and that software was hacked. In this case the Chinese could access whatever they chose. No doubt that didn't include everything, since there would be no way to store and make sense of it all, but as with our own government they could target whomever they wanted using the security hole built into the system.
CCP Is Impersonating Americans to Influence 2024 Elections
Harlan Report appeared to be a startup news program like many others. Its bio on TikTok promised to make American media great again.
The owner of the Harlan Report account originally claimed to be a U.S. military veteran who had lost faith in Biden. Soon after, they claimed to be a 29-year-old Trump supporter in New York. Months later, they claimed to be a 31-year-old Republican social media influencer from Florida.
Then, the account’s handle was later changed to “Harlan_RNC,” insinuating an official link to the Republican Party.
But Harlan was neither a legitimate news source nor run by an American citizen.
According to the findings of a report released last month by Graphika, a social network analysis company, Harlan Report was one of thousands of accounts linked to the world’s largest online influence operation.
That operation, dubbed “Spamouflage,” is a state-backed campaign from communist China with links to Chinese law enforcement.
Unlike the Harlan Report, most of Spamouflage’s efforts are not focused on targeting American conservatives but on amplifying existing criticisms toward American society and government at large.
There are other accounts that create similar content, but tailored for Democrats, and others that aim to anger and polarize independents, further disenfranchising them from the political process altogether.
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Foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections are nothing new, but their increasing stridency and varying levels of success are.
China, Iran, and Russia are all currently engaged in influence operations aiming to interfere in the 2024 elections, according to a report published in August by cybersecurity company Recorded Future.
That report found that Chinese state-backed actors are “amplifying content highlighting polarizing domestic issues”—including issues related to Black Lives Matter, school campus protests, and U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Ukraine—to sow discord between Americans.
Moreover, Iranian-backed actors have targeted Trump’s reelection campaign, attempting to gain access to its inner circle.
Russian-backed influence operations, meanwhile, have attempted to discredit the Democratic presidential ticket by spreading fabricated stories and images about Vice President Kamala Harris.
The report found that Chinese influence operations, including Spamouflage, have historically failed to generate traction among American audiences but are now seeing sporadic breakthrough success with viral content.
Those breakthroughs, in large part, are due to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfakes, which the operators behind Spamouflage use to play on the likes and dislikes of a target audience.
John Mills, who previously served as the director of cybersecurity policy at the U.S. Defense Department, told The Epoch Times that the CCP is using AI to sort and interpret user data to better exploit users’ fears and desires.
“People don’t understand the immense power of big data, big data analytics, and the AI component that China has mastered and is using on an unbelievable scale,” Mills said.
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Those operations could then attempt to trigger mass distrust or hysteria over real or faked events, which Mills referred to as “tailored mass psychosis.”
“This is psychological operations 101: knowing your target audience, knowing their trigger points, and that’s what they’re doing with Spamouflage on a breathtaking, unbelievable scale and creating these fake accounts,” Mills said
Last year, Meta, which first characterized Spamouflage as the world’s largest online influence operation, said China created 4,800 fake social media accounts posing as Americans.
In most of those cases, the accounts did not start by spreading fake content. Instead, they reshared posts created by real politicians and news outlets from both liberal and conservative sources to build followings and amplify divisive content.
As those followings grew, the profiles changed, both in who they claimed to be and in the type of content they delivered.
Mills said the technique used to identify and exploit Americans was essentially a new iteration of the same type of profiling that big tech corporations have used for years to track consumer preferences.
“When I’m looking for a trailer hitch [online], that commercial for a trailer hitch follows me wherever I go,” he said.
“Now, China has taken what our big tech was doing, but they’re doing it on a much grander scale, with a much more sinister agenda, and without any semblance of bumper cushions or guardrails.”
[ long comprehensive article at link ]
China like Russia before it aims to sow dissension
Iran and Now China Hacked The Trump Campaign; I Wonder Why They Support Harris...
It was just a few weeks ago that we learned that Iran hacked the Trump campaign and leaked (rather anodyne) documents to the world's media.
More recently, we learned that China hacked our telecoms and got access to phone and internet taps that were created by our intelligence "community," and while the information put out suggested that the information they got was only from accounts that the federal government was watching, I had my doubts about that.
Now we learn that China has been going after (getting?) data from President Trump's and J.D. Vance's phones.
China rebuffs meeting with US defense secretary
The Chinese rejection of the meeting in Laos comes just days after US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Peru for their final meeting under Biden’s administration. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the meeting was “candid, constructive, [and] wide ranging,” but that Biden would not act as a conduit between the Chinese government and the incoming Trump administration.
China has often used the cancellation of meetings and lines of communication as a way of registering displeasure with the United States. After then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, China cut off a number of lines of communication with the US, including on military issues and climate.
The rejection comes after a seeming improvement in military-to-military communications between the two countries over the last year or so.
China Puts Trump, Trade, and Foreign Business in the Crosshairs
Xi is leaving no aspect of society untouched, relentlessly trying to eliminate foreign influence. His continued attack on foreign business is just one part of this all-of-regime effort.
The paradox is that Xi now needs the world more than ever. He has, apparently for ideological reasons and his unwillingness to challenge core Communist Party constituencies, rejected the commonsense advice to make consumption the basis of the Chinese economy. Instead, he is trying to export his way out of a developing crisis, making China critically dependent on access to foreign markets.
Trump, in these circumstances, poses a direct threat to the Chinese regime. During his campaign for the presidency, he promised, in an interview with Fox News's Maria Bartiromo, across-the-board tariffs of at least 60% on China's products, which would shut off the American market to many Chinese goods.
To keep that market open, Beijing will have to absorb much of the cost of new tariffs, as it did in 2018 when Trump, using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, imposed tariffs of up to 25% on Chinese goods. Then, Beijing and Chinese manufacturers, through various stratagems, picked up somewhere between 75% to 81% of the 2018 levies.
History is repeating itself. China this month, beginning immediately before the American elections, has been driving down the value of the renminbi and making Chinese products cheaper. This is "currency manipulation," and it is especially predatory.
Now, Xi apparently hopes that his propaganda offensive will help convince others to help him defend what he calls "free trade." He does not really believe in free trade, however: He really wants China to have unfettered access to other markets while denying others access to China's.
Xi should know that his mercantilist tactics are convincing others to protect their industries from China's onslaught. The United States is not the only market that will erect high tariff walls. The European Union is doing so too, and even countries in the "Global South" — China is trying to make itself the champion of the world's less developed regions — are putting up tariff walls against Chinese goods.
So Trump, despite his tariff promises, is not the one attacking the rules-based trading order.
The real culprit is Xi Jinping.
The breaches were discovered in September and the scope of the intrusions is just now being revealed.
“Specifically, we have identified that [Chinese government]-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,” the FBI said in a statement on the hack earlier this month.
Salt Tycoon hacked the phones of Donald Trump and JD Vance, as well as individuals who worked for the Kamala Harris campaign.
It actually gets worse. The networks are still compromised and kicking the hackers out could involve physically replacing "literally thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of equipment across the country,” specifically outdated routers and switches, Warner said.
It's no secret that China has an enormous operation dedicated specifically to penetrating U.S. networks and hacking other systems relating to national security. Russia has been busy too, working in tandem with sophisticated criminal gangs for information and profit.
“This is massive, and we have a particularly vulnerable system,” Warner said. “Unlike some of the European countries where you might have a single telco, our networks are a hodgepodge of old networks. ... The big networks are combinations of a whole series of acquisitions, and you have equipment out there that’s so old it’s unpatchable.”
Yikes.
“Specifically, we have identified that [Chinese government]-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,” the FBI said in a statement on the hack earlier this month.
Salt Tycoon hacked the phones of Donald Trump and JD Vance, as well as individuals who worked for the Kamala Harris campaign.
It actually gets worse. The networks are still compromised and kicking the hackers out could involve physically replacing "literally thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of equipment across the country,” specifically outdated routers and switches, Warner said.
It's no secret that China has an enormous operation dedicated specifically to penetrating U.S. networks and hacking other systems relating to national security. Russia has been busy too, working in tandem with sophisticated criminal gangs for information and profit.
“This is massive, and we have a particularly vulnerable system,” Warner said. “Unlike some of the European countries where you might have a single telco, our networks are a hodgepodge of old networks. ... The big networks are combinations of a whole series of acquisitions, and you have equipment out there that’s so old it’s unpatchable.”
Yikes.
The Chinese Telecom Hack Was Much Worse Than We've Been Told
As for the hackers themselves, they have gone dark, though Sen. Warner believes they are still in parts of our telecom system and hoping to avoid drawing attention to that fact while the heat is on.
He said that removing them completely could take a long time as it will require replacing a lot of outdated equipment.
So the bottom line is that the Chinese government was probably listening in on Trump's calls and reading his texts during some portion of the past year. They probably had the same access to J.D. Vance's phone plus another 150 or so people, nearly all of them connected to the US government.
This is obviously unacceptable and there ought to be some sort of proportional response for an intrusion like this. China has been stealing our secrets and our private information for too long. At some point we need to smack their hand hard enough that they learn to stop.
China-Backed Salt Typhoon Hacking Group Remains Embedded in US Telecommunications
Policymakers are scrambling to find a solution to stop a massive, ongoing hack of U.S. telecommunications networks by a Chinese state-backed cyber group known as Salt Typhoon.
House lawmakers received a classified briefing on the issue from intelligence leaders on Nov. 10, a week after a similar briefing was held for their counterparts in the Senate.
Salt Typhoon has engaged in a wide-ranging espionage campaign since 2022, infiltrating major U.S. telecommunications networks over the years.
The group has compromised at least eight major telecommunications companies throughout dozens of nations, White House deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger told reporters on Dec. 4.
Major corporations such as Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink are among the companies targeted. The hackers have used persistent access to those companies’ infrastructure to collect metadata from a large number of customers, including the dates, times, and recipients of calls and texts made by an unknown number of Americans.
Although the total scale of metadata stolen is not yet known, the hackers also took the actual audio files of calls and content of texts from a smaller group of users, including some at the highest echelons of government.
Sneakers
Just sneakin' around....
One way is to stop buying Chinese made electronics embedded with backdoor firmware, and immediately replace the electronics from vetted sources.
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
Exactly and how much of our military is filled with Chinese electronics?
Bare-ya-cuda
Well-Known Member
Actually to be NDAA compliant military hardware cannot have electronics manufactured in china. This includes the small drones. Foreign nationals cannot develop software either.