China recruiting spies in the UK with fake headhunters and ‘sites like LinkedIn’

Chinese spies are using social media and fake recruitment agents to recruit sources with access to sensitive information in the UK. "Security Minister Dan Jarvis yesterday told the House of Commons that intelligence service MI5 “issued an espionage alert to Members of this House, Members of the other place and parliamentary …

[Vader]

Let's get really here the UK will sell anything like the current US administration at a price.

[Korev]

The UK willl sell anything to anyone to pretend that Brexit was a good idea

[VoiceOfTruth]

This was happening long before Brexit. The Tories 'privatised' public utilities, because being owned by the state was a 'bad idea'. Now our postal system, our electricity system, and most of our water system is owned by foreign states. But not one word from the Tories...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol if you need to work on secret squirrel things HMG makes it quite difficult, uncomfortable and expensive to get near those projects.

Conversly if you get elected (or happen to be a member of the Royal family) you can get access to pretty much anything you want by shouting loudly, stamping ones feet and making a ruddy good show of it. Then you can give any information you like to your new Chinese bestie/squeeze without any of that nonsense security getting in the way.

Having worked with politicians, most of them you could social engineer with a bag of sweets.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"politicians, most of them you could social engineer with a bag of sweets."

Or the mere promise of.

Not just thick but gullible.

[tiggity]

Ban LinkedIn

That would solve one attack vector.

.. It's even more full of people lying & over stating their abilities / knowledge than other social media sites.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

PhishedIn

Problem for HMG is they are dependent on Microsoft/Microsoft has a strangle hold on them, so banning PhishedIn won't happen.

[QuickLuck]

News at 10 - Spies are spying

If I've understood what t'Government are saying, Chinese spies employed by the Chinese spy agency are spying on behalf of the Chinese government.

Well, no shit Sherlock. That's their job.

I'm pretty sure that British spies employed by M16 are spying on the Chinese on behalf of the UK Government. They'd bloody well better be. That's their job too.

[QuickLuck]

Re: News at 10 - Spies are spying

B'ah ! Need more coffee. MI6 obviously. M16 are the department that no-one talks about. I shouldn't have even mentioned them. As long as everyone pretends that they didn't see M16 I should be okay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: News at 10 - Spies are spying

The bloody traffic on the M16 is atrocious these days!

[Casca]

Re: News at 10 - Spies are spying

Its all those foreign spyes fault!

[RT Harrison]

Re: News at 10 - Spies are spying

It's all those cats eyes down the middle of the road, too much curiosity.

[elsergiovolador]

CLOWN5

This piece reads like MI5 rummaging under the sofa cushions for something, anything, that makes them look busy after the courtroom fiasco where their own evidence evaporated on contact with daylight. And what do they triumphantly wave in the air? LinkedIn. Not a mole, not a breach, not some Bond-level dead drop. Just a couple of overeager recruitment profiles pinging connection requests at Westminster interns who still haven’t worked out their privacy settings.

We’re supposed to clutch our pearls because China has a “low threshold” for information. Please. So does half of Whitehall. If Beijing wants a “wider picture”, they can just read Hansard like the rest of us. This melodrama only lands if you believe professional networking sites are some mystical lair of state secrets rather than a graveyard of stale CVs and people loudly hinting they’re job hunting.

And the timing. Always the timing. An espionage alert the moment the Government finds itself humiliated, again, by its own procedural faceplants. An alert that somehow never extends to the entirely open courting of global asset managers who adore digital ID agendas, followed by a sudden domestic “digital identity revolution” rolled out without a shred of public mandate. Funny how the spooks never find that suspicious.

Instead we get this theatre: a stern minister, some recycled Christine Lee references, and a victory lap because they’ve finally removed the discount CCTV from “sensitive sites”. Thrilling stuff. If this is the great unseen war for sovereignty, it’s being fought with the energy of a neighbourhood watch group discovering WhatsApp.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Meanwhile

MI5 is apparently OK with putting loads of UK data on cloud computers and the consequent loss of sovereignty.

As @elsergiovolador wrote: "This piece reads like MI5 rummaging under the sofa cushions for something". It was a longstanding joke that MI5 barely managed to catch a spy that they needed to pivot to 'serious organised crime'. Yet there seems to be no reduction in serious organised crime either.

A few years ago a certain MP invited a bunch of people from GCHQ to parliament, took a photo and posted it online - no faces blurred. With bumpkins like that who needs enemies.

[Persona]

Pros and cons

I never got approached by China, but back in the late 90's I got a call from Moscow and was offered a "banking" job. The salary mentioned was many times what I was currently being paid. I also got the firm impression that it would be on top of what I was getting from the bank where I was working at the time, as staying working there was a key part of the role. I declined after weighing the plus of the money with the minus of a future that could well involve me floating face down in a Russian canal.

[heyrick]

Question : What are you guys sharing with the United States?

Given that the guy in charge over there is getting sweet talked by some, shall we say, less than salubrious people? I would not be surprised if privileged information could be available for a price, especially given his disdain for, well, pretty much any other country that doesn't pander to his giant ego and/or supply crass amounts of gold shiny. Oh, and he has it in for the BBC right now.

With friends like that...

[heyrick]

Second Question : You've never tried to recruit a Chinese person to spy for you?

Or are you just pissy about things because they're getting better at it?

[Meeker Morgan]

But the real question is ...

Who is more hostile to the existence of British people?

The Chinese government or the UK government?

The Chinese government just wants to make money.

Communism? What's that.

[gryphon]

Sharing your clearance, specific projects for clients etc. even if you only have SC is a definite no-no. Even worse if holding DV.

Annual security training will always say that as well.

"Since I hold DV I am working extensively with 'XYZ' on implementing 'ABC version X' - Not fine

"Recently completed a rollout of 'Product X' for Govt. dept Y" - Not fine

"I have implemented 'X' across a wide range of clients including detailed architecture and design etc. etc. - Fine (As long as it's a common product)

Obviously bad actors could put 2 and 2 together if you work for the usual suspects and say you are heavily involved in M365 or security software but shouldn't be presented on a plate.

[cookiecutter]

unless you're job hunting and unless you state you have active SC to recruitment consultants who won't even look at you without it. mines expired and really don't give 2 shits about getting it again,

however governments willingness to offshore outsource & pack themselves full of +91 companies mean you can now never tell the difference between a legitimate approach from a recruiter or a scammer in hyderabad... both of whom are probably based in ge same office

[Jason Bloomberg]

Watching you watching me watching you

I would be disappointed with any country who hasn't got spies in every other country, aren't running dubious recruitment campaigns, trying to get a heads-up on what's actually going on and what a country's future plans are.

When we start drawing attention to who is doing it to us I suggest it says more about us than them; who we consider the greatest and latest designated enemy, who we are likely to end up in conflict with, who the right-wing and industrial-military complex would like to see us in conflict with.

This time it's China, again, but I expect Russia, Iran, North Korea and other 'bad guys' can reclaim their crown as worstest existential threat. And one day we might even realise it's been America all along.

The one with 大人物政治之书 in the pocket.

[cookiecutter]

genuinely meh!

large firms & government departments whining about this can piss off. when asking someone from the Cyber Defence Alliance about their members being the leaders of offshoring & outsourcing decimating the UK IT industry & the cyber defence & infrastructure teams, why should I care about any of this, especially as my career options look like bus driver or barista even as Ive constantly stated online, if Id been working at M&S as the vmware admin, they wouldn't have been ransomwared.

The answer? "well the attackers are international so we should have international teams"

so once again to any of the 3 or 4 letter acronyms reading this while their bosses cry about China & Russia being existential threats while at the same time refusing to sanction China or India or even the bankers who laundered money for the Russians..... genuinely why should I care?

If my bank gets ransomwared, I've still got no money, if a supply chain breaks & there's no fuel in the petrol stations, I don't have a car anymore.

Why should I care about any of this!

[amanfromMars 1]

El Reg to Internetional Rescue ....

Plenty of sensitive intel is tested here practically every day on The Register ...... with quite a lot of it being like Chinese to many commenting on such matters as they clearly have failed to grasp and accept as a current reality being virtually engineered for universal presentation and supported by and reinforced and secured with 0day defences ..... and the spontaneity of anonymous and autonomous unknown unknown attacks from the Future Defenders' NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACtive IT and AI Arsenal.

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. .... Donald Rumsfeld

[Robin Bradshaw]

Hypocrisy

So the same people who are wailing that "companies subject to the national intelligence law of the People’s Republic of China" may be forced to assist the Chinese government are also the people who will force UK companys to provided access. I believe we call them a Technical Capacity Notice and one was used earlier in the year to force Apple to weaken iCloud backup encryption.

I presume they will also be issuing a warning soon to the rest of the world to remove any British made products as they can't be trusted either.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Chinese spies

Give them some data, and they’re hungry for more two hours later…