Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

US Charges Chinese Worker for IBM With ‘Economic Espionage’

Washington – US authorities charged a former Chinese employee of tech giant IBM with economic espionage Tuesday for allegedly stealing proprietary source code to hand over to a Chinese government agency.

Washington – US authorities charged a former Chinese employee of tech giant IBM with economic espionage Tuesday for allegedly stealing proprietary source code to hand over to a Chinese government agency.

The Department of Justice said Xu Jiaqiang had been a developer for an unnamed US company when he took the source code, intending to provide it to the Chinese National Health and Planning Commission, where he previously worked.

At the same time, he offered the code, the essential kernel of software programs often held tightly by their owners, to US FBI agents posing as tech company officials seeking software for their company.

After an investigation of more than one year, Xu was arrested last December and was charged with theft of trade secrets.

Tuesday’s indictment supersedes that charge with three counts of economic espionage, each of which could bring 15 years in prison, and three counts of trade secret threat, which carry 10 year sentences apiece.

The indictment did not name IBM, and the company did not return queries. Justice officials would also not confirm IBM’s involvement.

But the company website and a LinkedIn profile both name a Xu Jiaqiang as a developer at IBM, and press reports since the December arrest also put him at the company.

“Xu allegedly stole proprietary information from his former employer for his own profit and the benefit of the Chinese government,” US Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said in a statement.

“Those who steal America’s trade secrets for the benefit of foreign nations pose a threat to our economic and national security interests.”

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.

Application Security

PayPal is alerting roughly 35,000 individuals that their accounts have been targeted in a credential stuffing campaign.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

The FBI dismantled the network of the prolific Hive ransomware gang and seized infrastructure in Los Angeles that was used for the operation.