back to article How Chinese insiders are stealing data scooped up by President Xi's national surveillance system

Chinese tech company employees and government workers are siphoning off user data and selling it online - and even high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials and FBI-wanted hackers' sensitive information is being peddled by the Middle Kingdom's thriving illegal data ecosystem. "While Western cybercrime research focuses …

  1. martinusher Silver badge

    Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

    We just don't seem to be able to place Chinese people. On one hand they're just a bunch of automatons, puppets who dance to the tune of their leader, "Xi (who must be obeyed". On the other they always seem to be looking for an edge, and if that edge includes 'adapting' existing product designs, then that's what they'll do.

    The truth is actually more prosaic. If you've worked with Chinese people then you'll discover that apart from them being people more or less like us you'll also learn that they're really diverse in attitudes and demeanor -- just like us, in fact. One inescapable fact, though, is that there's a lot of them. Five times as many as there are people in the US, or 25 times the population of the UK. Since they're diverse (and they're not all "Han" Chinese, BTW)(that's the shorter people with dark, straight, hair) you're going to get a fair spread of extremely smart, fairly dumb, extremely opportunistic, rather moral etc. types. Its a fact of statistical life. Its also something of a miracle that the PRC, a country larger than Europe, just has one government (easily explained by the fact its really more of a confederation and like here in the US the further you get from the physical seat of power the less important it seems to be).

    It would help if we adopted a somewhat less adversarial relationship with them because they have law enforcement who have roughly the same interest in the same crimes as we do. But while we're busy playing Cold War 2 with them we're not only missing out on important links but also fostering a "What do we care?" type attitude among them (its the same sort of attitude we have here in the US when an executive gets gunned down in broad daylight on a city street -- "Its wrong but 'they' are an arrogant bunch of SOBs that actively work to harm us so what's it to me?").

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

      >” you're going to get a fair spread of extremely smart…”

      So statistically that’s 25 extremely smart Chinese for every one smart Uk person, some would regard that as an unfair advantage….

      1. Blazde Silver badge

        Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

        So statistically that’s 25 extremely smart Chinese for every one smart Uk person, some would regard that as an unfair advantage

        What you're saying is the Chinese people have a 25 times greater chance of overthrowing their Xi-tyranny than we do with our political arm-chairing? Arguably the only reason they failed in '89 is that the army units were kept isolated and ignorant, and that's no longer possible with the modern internet.

        On the other hand... they have 25 unquestioning numbnuts for every unquestioning numbnut in the UK, and we know that's an awful lot of numbnuttery. So it's probably all hopeless.

        1. martinusher Silver badge

          Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

          They've got plenty of numbnuts. One Chinese colleague described Chinese engineering as "If at first you don't succeed, lower your expectations". (BTW --The same fellow who was familiar with "Yes, Minister" -- he used to watch it with his mates after school -- in English -- when he lived in Bejing. These are the people we're competing with......)

          I am at a loss to get over the idea that just because the Daily Telegraph describes such and such a country as a tyranny doesn't actually make it so. This attitude is harming us in the West. (But why should I worry? Not my problem if them Orientals wipe the floor with us.)

          1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
            Gimp

            "just because the Daily Telegraph describes..a country as a tyranny doesn't actually make it so."

            Quite true.

            The national level facial recognition, arrest-without-trial do that and any-party-as-long-as-it's-the-Communist-party do that quite well.

            1. MachDiamond Silver badge

              "just because the Daily Telegraph describes..a country as a tyranny doesn't actually make it so."

              "The national level facial recognition, arrest-without-trial do that and any-party-as-long-as-it's-the-Communist-party do that quite well."

              The odd thing is that "western" facial recognition systems have a hard time discriminating between people of Asian decent. I wonder if this is why the people have been encouraged to conduct more and more of their daily business digitally. Facial recognition plus a log of transactions would help in tracking people. Obviously, a false recognition on the other side of town can be discarded if a person has badged into a transportation system or building along with a facial scan at or nearby that place.

              1. vekkq

                just a bias in training data for those facial recognition systems. i'm sure they used first and foremost freely available data like prison mugshots, and asians are somewhat rare there.

          2. Blazde Silver badge

            Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

            just because the Daily Telegraph describes such and such a country as a tyranny doesn't actually make it so

            Flawless reasoning on many issues, but this is one of those 'stopped clock right once a day' things. You should probably widen your reading material.

            1. Teal Bee

              Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

              >'stopped clock right once a day'

              It's twice, right?

              1. MonkeyJuice Bronze badge

                Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

                Depends how inferior your clock is.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

          "On the other hand... they have 25 unquestioning numbnuts for every unquestioning numbnut in the UK, and we know that's an awful lot of numbnuttery. So it's probably all hopeless."

          It's hard to say if the ratio would change, but the total amounts would be worse for the Chinese population.

          Another factor is the rules of the game are different. Don't get caught is obviously a universal. How one can adapt to the remaining in a way that increases their wealth/power/happiness can be influenced by education and oppression. Not only formal education, but the university of the streets as well. Humans have the ability to learn from the mistakes of others in a bunch of different ways so somebody observant can spot the ways to not game the system and wind up breaking rocks, making number plates, working at the coal face... Like Edison's group, many will find yet another way to fail, but a few will succeed, at least for a while, maybe long enough.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

        I don't know about "smart" that's a difficult thing to measure...but there are almost certainly 25 Chinese violin players for every 1 UK violin player, I would go as far as to say it's even higher...there are certain musical instruments that just aren't worth learning (outside of personal pleasure) because of Chinese saturation...it used to be that if you played a musical instrument it would be beneficial on your university application...one of the most practical instruments was violin, because they're small, relatively easy to learn and compared to other instruments, quite cost effective...these days, there are so many violin players it's insane and the vast majority of them seem to be Chinese. The posher ones seem to prefer piano.

        1. MyffyW Silver badge

          Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

          Yamaha sell a very capable keyboard with three octaves for about 80 quid, so one doesn't have to be too posh to develop some proficiency on the piano. And my amateur playing sounds way better than any violin antics I could evidence.

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

            "Yamaha sell a very capable keyboard with three octaves for about 80 quid, so one doesn't have to be too posh to develop some proficiency on the piano. "

            Many people with access to a piano and enforced lessons as a child never really got too far. There has to be an interest in becoming proficient. I'm a much better drummer than clarinet player, but I started the clarinet in school and drums much later. I just didn't see any benefit to playing clarinet in an orchestra, but there are chicks that dig drummers in rock bands!

            1. Nuff Said

              Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

              "Chicks"?

              The 1970s are calling...

              1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

                "The 1970s are calling..."

                1980's

        2. Andrew Scott Bronze badge

          Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

          Playing any instrument well is not "easy". If you want to find an "easy" instrument to play, start with the recorder. Flute is pretty easy also, no trouble to get an good sound out of a flute, but other instruments are much harder to get a good and consistent sound out of. Learning to play violin is not easy. Try standing and holding both arms out in awkward positions for and hour at a time while trying to get a "good" non scratchy in tune sound and thinking on your feet to choose the best way to play each note where the position is getting you ready to play the next and there could be perhaps a dozen positions your hand could be in to play one note. I've heard live concerts where a pro managed to be off by quite a bit. heard it back in 70's so can't quite remember how badly he was off but pretty bad. Hard to do when you have frets or keys. easy when you don't have any.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

            Speaking purely from my own experience... Playing the piano in a way that is not completely awful is far easier than recorder. That kind of breath control was just not in my skill set at that age.

    2. sedregj Bronze badge
      Windows

      Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

      Wot?

      You might as well start with: "Unaccustomed as I am ..." or "Some of my best mates are Chinese" or similar bollocks.

    3. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

      "One inescapable fact, though, is that there's a lot of them."

      Yes, and I don't think it's entirely possible to smash the entrepreneurial spirit out of everybody in an entire country. There certainly won't be a way to execute every manipulative, moral-free Alpha as that just breeds for ones that are better at not being caught and manacled to the wall. Just the game of numbers will lead to plenty of innovation in all sorts of fields, even ones that are a bit dodgy.

    4. cryptopants

      Re: Chinese are born entrepreneurs, unfortunately

      Relations between China and the US have been growing steadily since Nixon.

      The USA sponsored China entry into GATT when no one else would.

      China has long maintained that their nuclear arsenal is mainly for deterrence and they would never use it as a first strike. The US and other nations don’t of course, believe any official published numbers about nuclear size and strength. They do their own assessments.

      And what the US found was that the Chinese arsenal was kept relatively small, around a few hundred which land a lot of credibility to their claim of being defensive.

      Everything is changed to since Xi came to power. And what is the US see when they look into the desert in China? It sees massive amounts of concrete going to build hundreds of silo to house’s new missiles for their massively expanding nuclear arsenal.

      There’s only one reason for keeping that many missiles around and it’s not for defense.

      So China is the main reason why the US opted out of the ABM treaty with Russia because China refuses to sign up to any arms reduction.

      You can say what you want about the people, but the government is in charge there, and they see this constant line of BS that we are somehow responsible for all of these decisions this. And it’s unfortunately, that in the west will buy into this line of bull.

  2. Denarius Silver badge
    Meh

    just goes to show

    you cant trust _any_ boss/government/system. Mostly everyone is for sale

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: just goes to show

      Oh everyone is for sale, it is just some have a depressingly low price.

  3. DS999 Silver badge

    Seems like a great route for foreign intelligence services

    No need to figure out a way to spy on Chinese targets yourself, just find an enterprising insider you can pay off to supply you with the information you want. Obviously you don't want them knowing they are providing that information to the CIA, because someone can both be a criminal happy to take bribes but also a patriot who won't take bribes from the "enemy", but that's easy enough since they'll never meet face to face and the US has no shortage of native Chinese citizens who don't like the Xi government who could fill an intermediary role.

    1. TechnicalVault

      Backdoors are always a double edged sword

      The Chinese should have learnt from their own attacks on US telephone networks (https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/25/salt_typhoon_mark_warner_warning/); and GCHQs attacks on Belgian telephone networks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Socialist); etc. etc. Any backdoor you put into a network for "lawful intercepts" is going to be attacked and used by your adversaries. This is especially the case when a lot of people have access to this information.

      1. spold Silver badge

        Re: Backdoors are always a double edged sword

        If you buy a SIM in China you need to produce state issued ID, or a passport. So your identity is bound to the IMEI and MSIN associated with the mobile device, your traffic is perhaphs encrypted but your identity not so much. These are readable as the traffic flies through switches, even if encrypted. You may also therefore be associated with other "known" individuals with whom you are communicating.

        1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
          Big Brother

          "your traffic is perhaphs encrypted but your identity not so much. "

          One of the lesser known developments of Bletchley park was the idea of "Traffic analysis" Tracking which radio stations were talking to which stations. Which ones seemed to be using which codes and so on.

          Back in the day this was expensive in human resources and storage (lots of paper)

          But today storage is very cheap. And as you say you're ID is bound to the IMEI and MSIN so swapping phones don't help.

          OTOH if you resort to letters posted to letter drops (or actual dead drops, like behind the proverbial toilet tank).....

          1. spold Silver badge

            Re: "your traffic is perhaphs encrypted but your identity not so much. "

            I recommend "Gordon Welchman, The Hut 6 story". He doesn't get as much credit as he deserved vs. Turing for his Bletchley Park work. IMHO there are bits where he gets a bit self-important, but in the circumstances...

        2. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: Backdoors are always a double edged sword

          If you buy a SIM in China you need to produce state issued ID, or a passport

          So the shopkeepers in a million stores all around China that sell SIMs are relied upon to tell a legit passport from a fake one? Sounds like it would be pretty easy to defeat that. It might be pretty risky for a Chinese citizen to do, but a foreigner who was interested in hiding what they're doing by buying multiple phones, multiple SIMs, all with false IDs so it can't be traced back to you? Very easy. Yes there's some risk, at minimum if you're caught they'll drive you to the airport and send you home, at worst if they think you're spying (and if you do all this you probably are) you may be in worse trouble, but I'll bet it would still be 1000x better as a foreigner than a Russian prison.

      2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Gimp

        "Any backdoor..into a network for "lawful intercepts" is..attacked and used by your adversaries. "

        Funny how that works is it not?

        The idea that there is some criminal whose security is soo effective that only allowing the monitoring of all communications 24/7/365 (which appears to be what GCHQ can do) can catch beggars belief.

        Who is this person (or people)? What crime are committing? Why have we never heard of any arrests for this?

        The real reason for the pervasive love of these provisions is Cardinal Richelieu's comment that "Give me six lines from an honest man and I will find something with which to hang him."

        It will end when a)Enough people see through the usual TOTC bulls**t and b)Decide they don't want surveillance agencies to operate in this way.

        1. 0laf Silver badge

          Re: "Any backdoor..into a network for "lawful intercepts" is.....

          If you are waiting on a critical mass of citizens aware enough and motivated enough to do something about mass surveillance you will be waiting a very long time

    2. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Seems like a great route for foreign intelligence services

      "Obviously you don't want them knowing they are providing that information to the CIA, because someone can both be a criminal happy to take bribes but also a patriot who won't take bribes from the "enemy", but that's easy enough since they'll never meet face to face and the US has no shortage of native Chinese citizens who don't like the Xi government who could fill an intermediary role."

      Very good point and once the information is set free, it winds up in all sorts of places that the initial acquirer may not have intended.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Surely there are no bad actors in the West behaving like this.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      yes, but they don't actively vote to put know criminals, rapists and conmen into power (in the case of orange turd all 3 at once)

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Gimp

    First data fetishists got to fetishise

    Then (some of them) got to monetise

    This will continue regardless of nation (THE PATRIOT act is AFAIK still in effect in the US) until

    a)The obsessive collection of personal data by governments regardless of purpose is a disease of certain people. Statistical arguments can prove that IRL more random s**t collected about people does not make for more reliable decisions about criminal behaviour (for whatever definition of "criminal" your government uses).

    b)There will always be bad actors who will sell this information for money, possibly to your opponents, who will use this information to subvert your own people.

    c)There is only 1 day to guarantee this information will remain protected and secure. That is not to collect it at all

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: First data fetishists got to fetishise

      There is a clear lesson for our own politicians here. If even the CCP can't stop government-mandated backdoors and spyware being exploited by the local crooks, what chance do we have? Possibly something to mention next time you hear your own local elected representative calling for a pants-down approach to cyber security "because of the children".

    2. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: First data fetishists got to fetishise

      "c)There is only 1 day to guarantee this information will remain protected and secure. That is not to collect it at all"

      "They only winning move is to not play." I'd love to know if that was written for the movie "War Games" or has deeper roots.

      "How about a nice game of chess?"

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        " I'd love to know if that was written for the movie "War Games""

        I looked into this a little. It seems to have originated with anti-nuclear protestors in the 50's or 60's. There was a tendency to consider nuclear war as an extension of conventional warfare and that when the fighting is over we would rebuild.

        They challenged this notion, pointing out that the landscape would be covered with dispersed mixes of shortish lived (like 60Co at about 5 years, that can sterilise people) and long lived like Pu (204 000 years?) making recovery effectively impossible due to the huge cleanup operation from a population that might have shrunk 90%.

        So "The only winning move is not to play." Or (as someone pointed out later) get others to "play" and pick up the pieces later.

        If that sounds familiar that's probably because it's the plot of "You Only Live Twice."

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: " I'd love to know if that was written for the movie "War Games""

          "long lived like Pu (204 000 years?) making recovery effectively impossible due to the huge cleanup operation"

          The toxicity of Pu would be the bigger problem. Something that's radioactive for 200,000 years isn't "that" radioactive. Something radioactive for a few days is really really bad. The type of radiation is also a factor.

    3. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
      Joke

      Data Security Guarantees

      There is only 1 day to guarantee this information will be protected and secure.

      Yes, and that one day is the Twelfth of Never.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Look At The Label On That New Product You Bought.....

    ....clothes, air fryer, MG....and so on.....

    Yup....it says "Made in China".

    Q. Now why would that be?

    A. Because in 1990, western accountants decided that "Cheap is Better"....and sub-contracted everything to China!!

    And in the mean time (1990 to 2024):

    (1) The Chinese know more about technology than we do.

    (2) The Chinese are hollowing out our educational system....using profits from trade with us!

    (3) ...so that we have NO CHANCE AT ALL of developing new technology for our next generation.

    If you think this is paranoia....just take a look at a large company in Cupertino, CA....take a look at Huawei.....

    And all we get in the media is persistent whining about low growth in the UK....and of course whining about those nasty Chinese.

    We really need to get a grip.....but there's no sign at all of that happening.

    1. OhForF' Silver badge
      WTF?

      Chinese hollowing out our educational system?

      I agree that outsorcing all kinds of production to China to get cheaper stuff has a lot of downsides but i don't see how we can blame China for the state of our western eduaction systems.

      What am i missing, how is chinese money used to hollow out our education systems?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Chinese hollowing out our educational system?

        I think the guy must think the china forced the idiots in our countries to vote for "conservatives" and "republiKKKans" (other right wing loonies are availible near you!) knowing they would damage schools and health sytems.

        He might be right, cheapest way to wreck a country is to get right wing loonies elected!

        1. JugheadJones

          Re: Chinese hollowing out our educational system?

          looking forward to see if this will happen in the US over the next 4 years

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Chinese hollowing out our educational system?

            "looking forward to see if this will happen in the US over the next 4 years"

            There are universities in the US with a very high percentage of Asian students from out of the country. It's quite possible that Tesla was allowed to have a factory in Shanghai without the requirement of a domestic partner so Chinese workers could gain an education in western manufacturing and management techniques. The cars they can just buy and disassemble. Would Tesla have opened a facility and brought in as much of their tech if they had to partner with some domestic firm? The "what" is often of less importance than the "how".

  7. PhilipN Silver badge

    China is definitely losing the propaganda war

    This article and comments.

    I rest my case.

  8. mcswell

    Passwords?

    "A couple of SGK queries uncovered his email addresses and multiple passwords..." Passwords? Encrypted, or not? Enquiring minds want to know!

  9. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    Why is the graphic in red showing java code ?

    1. MonkeyJuice Bronze badge

      Perhaps because it resembles a fairly popular class of sandbox escape?

  10. 0laf Silver badge
    FAIL

    Universal laws of data collection

    If a government says it needs to collect lots of data on you and it'll only be used by the good guys then:

    1 - It's bullshit

    2 - They won't protect it properly

    Seems to apply universally to Western democracies and Eastern communist states

  11. vekkq

    would be funny if the chinese government falls because of this.

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