How Chinese Spies Got the N.S.A.’s Hacking Tools, and Used Them for Attacks

On the 6th of May, The New York Times posted an article called “How Chinese Spies Got the N.S.A.’s Hacking Tools, and Used Them for Attacks.” The New York Times has a moderate Left-Center bias, often using convincing language, as well as viewing many issues with a “liberal lens”. Although they may be slightly biased, they have been known to use highly factual information. This article dives into a report by Symantec, which is a well known digital security company. In this report, as well as the article they speak about the N.S.A, as well as a group of “Chinese Intelligence agents”, which are referred to as “Buckeye” by Symantec.. They proceed to talk about the damage that has been caused by these “Chinese Intelligence Agents” stealing N.S.A hacking software, such as the mass cyber attacks by the Chinese using this American software on countries like Luxembourg, Vietnam, Belgium, The Philippines, and Hong Kong. For example one attack on a major unnamed telecommunications network have given “Chinese intelligence officers” possible access hundreds of thousands to millions of private communications.

These cybergroups seem to be very common, and hit very hard. Like my last article, these Chinese “Buckeye” hackers are very important to get rid of as they are doing so much damage to all of these countries. The New York Times seems to use a lot of information about the fact that they are definitely Chinese, but in all of this information, it is never stated that they are Chinese Intelligence Officers. For example the article talks about the indictment of three Chinese hackers in the group “Buckeye”, but then states “While prosecutors did not assert that the three were working on behalf of the Chinese government.” I believe this to be slightly biased, but I also believe that there is a possibility that this group could be working for the Chinese Government, and I don’t like to think about the possibility of a huge cyber-war, but it could happen.There are more and more cases of these Government Funded groups popping up all the time, and we need to focus more on these groups, as well as independent hackers that try to cause as much destruction as possible.