LinkedIn is becoming China's go-to platform for recruiting foreign spies

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.cyberscoop.com/linkedin-china-spies-kevin-mallory-ron-hansen/

By Jeff Stone
CYBERSCOOP
March 26, 2019

Buried in the 41-page felony complaint charging a former U.S. intelligence 
operative of spying for the Chinese, FBI investigators declare that the 
suspect, Ron Rockwell Hansen, had been printing information from his 
colleagues’ LinkedIn pages.

Hansen, a former Defense Intelligence Agency case officer who pleaded guilty on 
March 15 to attempted espionage against the U.S., took information from the 
professional networking site related to several former and current DIA case 
officers before a 2015 trip to China.

The complaint does not state how that information was used, if at all, but it’s 
enough to raise the notion Hansen may have been passing LinkedIn data to 
Chinese handlers in addition to other secret DIA materials files.

"I solicited from an intelligence case officer working for the Defense 
Intelligence Agency national defense information that I knew Chinese 
Intelligence services would find valuable, and I agreed to act as a conduit to 
sell that information to the Chinese" in exchange for hundreds of thousands of 
dollars, Hansen said as part of his plea deal.

[...]

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