China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Yeah, that place out 'there'. Anything not really Cambodia related should go here.
User avatar
yong
Expatriate
Posts: 4267
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2018 12:03 pm
Reputation: 2769
Thailand

China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by yong »

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-14/ ... s/12656668

China's 'hybrid war': Beijing's mass surveillance of Australia and the world for secrets and scandal
By political editor Andrew Probyn and political reporter Matthew Doran
Posted 19hhours ago, updated 15hhours ago

Image
The massive data leak raises serious questions about China's aggressive intelligence gathering operations.(Unsplash: Taskin Ashiq)

Key points:
  • [2.4 million names and profiles are on the database, including more than 35,000 Australians
  • The company which created the database has links to China's government and military
  • The leak raises further questions about the spread and scope of China's intelligence gathering operations


A Chinese company with links to Beijing's military and intelligence networks has been amassing a vast database of detailed personal information on thousands of Australians, including prominent and influential figures.

A database of 2.4 million people, including more than 35,000 Australians, has been leaked from the Shenzhen company Zhenhua Data which is believed to be used by China's intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security.

Zhenhua has the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party among its main clients.

Information collected includes dates of birth, addresses, marital status, along with photographs, political associations, relatives and social media IDs.

It collates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and even TikTok accounts, as well as news stories, criminal records and corporate misdemeanours.

While much of the information has been "scraped" from open-source material, some profiles have information which appears to have been sourced from confidential bank records, job applications and psychological profiles.

The company is believed to have sourced some of its information from the so-called "dark web".

One intelligence analyst said the database was "Cambridge Analytica on steroids", referring to the trove of personal information sourced from Facebook profiles in the lead up to the 2016 US election campaign.


Image
Zhenhua Data's vast database has explicit references to use by military intelligence.(Supplied.)

But this data dump goes much further, suggesting a complex global operation using artificial intelligence to trawl publicly available data to create intricate profiles of individuals and organisations, potentially probing for compromise opportunities.

The database has been shared with an international consortium of media outlets in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Australia, comprising the Australian Financial Review and the ABC.

The media consortium sought comment from Zhenhua, but received no reply.

Image
Zhenhua Data's chief executive Wang Xuefeng boasted of using data to wage "hybrid warfare".(Supplied)

The company's chief executive Wang Xuefeng, a former IBM employee, has used Chinese social media app WeChat to endorse waging "hybrid warfare" through manipulation of public opinion and "psychological warfare".

Of the 35,558 Australians on the database, there are state and federal politicians, military officers, diplomats, academics, civil servants, business executives, engineers, journalists, lawyers and accountants.

They range from the current and former prime ministers, to Atlassian billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, and business figures David Gonski and Jennifer Westacott.

But there are 656 of the Australians featured on the list as being of "special interest" or "politically exposed". Exactly what the company means by either of these terms is unexplained, but the people on the list are disparate in occupation and background, and there seems little to no explanation in who has made the list.

The list includes current Victorian Supreme Court Judge Anthony Cavanough, retired Navy Admiral and former Lockheed Martin chief executive Raydon Gates, former ambassador to China Geoff Raby, ex Tasmanian Premier Tony Rundle and former foreign minister Bob Carr.

Singer Natalie Imbruglia features in this list, along with One Nation co-founder David Oldfield, National Party President Larry Anthony, former treasurer Peter Costello's son Sebastian, ex-Labor MP Emma Husar, News Corp journalist Ellen Whinnett and rural businesswoman and ABC director Georgie Somerset.

But it also has some Australians with a criminal past, including self-proclaimed Perth sheikh Junaid Thorne, Geelong accountant and fraudster Robert Andrew Kirsopp and ex-TEAC boss Gavin Muir who died in 2007 just weeks before he faced court for dishonesty offences.

Image
Singer Natalie Imbruglia and technology entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brooks feature on the list.(AAP/ABC News)

The database was leaked to a US academic based in Vietnam, Professor Chris Balding, who until 2018 had worked at the elite Peking University before leaving China citing fears for his physical safety.

"China is absolutely building out a massive surveillance state both domestically and internationally," Professor Balding told the ABC.

"They're using a wide variety of tools — this one is taken primarily from public sources, there is non-public data in here, but it is taken primarily from public sources.


"I think it speaks to the broader threat of what China is doing and how they are surveilling, monitoring and seeking to influence… not just their own citizens, but citizens around the world."

Professor Balding has returned to the United States, leaving Vietnam after being advised it was no longer safe for him to be there.

It was also a grave risk taken by the person who leaked the database to him, who contacted him as he started publishing articles about Chinese tech giant Huawei.

"We've worked very hard to make sure that there are no links between me and that person, once I realised what had been given to me," he said.

"They are still in China. But hopefully I think they will be safe."


'Collection nodes' scattered around the world, one likely in Australia

Image
Christopher Balding was given the vast database, and has returned to the United States citing safety concerns.(Supplied: Fulbright University Vietnam)

Professor Balding gave the database to Canberra cyber security company Internet 2.0 which was able to restore 10 per cent of the 2.4 million records for individuals.

Internet 2.0's chief executive Robert Potter said Zhenhua had built the capacity to track naval vessels and defence assets, to assess the careers of military officers and catalogue the intellectual property of China's competitors.

"This mass collection of data is taking place in China's private sector, in the same way Beijing outsources its cyber attack capability to private subcontractors," Mr Potter told the ABC.


"In the process, the company has violated the privacy of millions of global citizens, the terms of service of just about every major social media platform and hacked other companies for their data."

Of the 250,000 records recovered, there are 52,000 on Americans, 35,000 Australians, 10,000 Indian, 9,700 British, 5,000 Canadians, 2,100 Indonesians, 1,400 Malaysia and 138 from Papua New Guinea.

There are 793 New Zealanders profiled in the database, of whom 734 are tagged of special interest or politically exposed.

Zhenhua boasts it has about 20 "collection nodes" scattered around the world to vacuum enormous amounts of data and send back to China. Two of the nodes have been identified as being in Kansas in the United States and the South Korean capital Seoul. The Australian node has not been detected.


Image
The Zhenhua Data database monitors military assets, using things like social media posts of officers to plot out movements.(Supplied.)

The military sector appears to be of particular interest to the company. The database tracks promotion prospects of officers and political networks.

In one instance, the career progression of a US naval officer was closely monitored and he was flagged as a future commander of a nuclear aircraft carrier.

"The company… boasts that it has 20 information collection centres spread around the world," Clive Hamilton from Charles Sturt University said.

"This suggests that there's almost certainly one in Australia. So that means somewhere in Australia, there is a Chinese state-owned company that is sucking up data from across Australia and feeding it into China's intelligence service.

"Well, where is that centre? And if we can find it, shouldn't we close it down? It would appear to be violating all kinds of laws."


Image
Academic Clive Hamilton argues it is likely a "collection node" is somewhere in Australia.(ABC News: Leon Compton)

Professor Hamilton said the wide range of people named in this database provided serious cause for concern.

"If you're a 14-year-old daughter of a politician, then we now know that China's intelligence service is monitoring your social media commentary, and recording pieces of information that are of interest or may be of interest in the future," he said.

"So it really is quite sinister in the way that China is targeting so many aspects of society in a country like Australia for sucking up and storing this intelligence, and using artificial intelligence in a exceptionally sophisticated way."


Concerns of aggressive intelligence gathering operations

A Five Eyes intelligence officer, who uses the pseudonym Aeneas, has pored over the data, and described the technique as "mosaic intelligence gathering" — sourcing vast tracts of information from a wide variety of sources.

"The individual pieces of intelligence are like tiles in a mosaic, which make sense when they are arranged the right way," Aeneas said.

He argued it was a different way to collect information than how many western agencies went about their work.

"For example, we had a long-running penetration operation inside a Chinese diplomatic post," Aeneas said.

"You'd think we would have collected on everyone, but we didn't.

"Not everyone inside the post was an intelligence operator for the other side.

"We collected thoroughly on their spooks and stringers, but unless someone in the post was a possible source for us, we left them alone."

Australia's fledgling space industry is also of some interest to Zhenhua.

Queensland's Gilmour Space Technology, founded by banker Adam Gilmour, has been closely profiled by the company — so much so that every board member of the company has been profiled in the database.

Zhenhua went looking for everyone in Australia with the surname Gilmour to probe the company.

The discovery of Zhenhua's core business, known as the Overseas Key Information Database, or OKIDB, will fuel concern about China's aggressive intelligence gathering operations.

It also presents a challenge to domestic cyber defence, given the likely presence of other hostile computer servers in Australia trawling public source data.

Zhenhua Data, established in 2018, is believed to be owned by China Zhenhua Electronics Group which in turn is owned by state-owned China Electronic Information Industry Group (CETC), a military research company which had an association with the University of Technology Sydney until 2019.

Image
Zhenhua Data's parent company is believed to be the Chinese state-owned CETC, which previously partnered with the University of Technology Sydney.(702 ABC Sydney: Amanda Hoh)
User avatar
Phnom Poon
Expatriate
Posts: 1795
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2019 5:44 pm
Reputation: 892
Kiribati

Re: China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by Phnom Poon »

should we call this new, but not that new, space cyberpolitical?
cyber-geopolitical?

.

monstra mihi bona!
User avatar
Chuck Borris
Expatriate
Posts: 781
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2020 2:42 pm
Reputation: 490
Cambodia

Re: China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by Chuck Borris »

Only bad bad Chinese do that for sure!
Don"t Eat The Yellow Snow.
User avatar
ExPenhMan
Expatriate
Posts: 1872
Joined: Sun May 18, 2014 7:42 pm
Reputation: 977
Location: Bangkok
Canada

Re: China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by ExPenhMan »

Somewhat related, Australia finds Papua New Guinea data centre built by Huawei in 2018 just full of data holes and virtually no security.
PNG government is now seeking assistance from the Australian government to upgrade the centre. Canberra has not yet provided financial funding for the centre, and [cyber-security investigation] report notes that the centre may require a "full rebuild".

https://www.computing.co.uk/news/401884 ... port-warns
User avatar
Bitte_Kein_Lexus
Expatriate
Posts: 4421
Joined: Sun May 18, 2014 7:32 pm
Reputation: 1325

Re: China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by Bitte_Kein_Lexus »

This has been going on for over twenty years with foreign students and all that. It's nothing new. Even companies like Huawei basically stole from companies sun as Nortel back in the day. Look left and right at Chinese companies, from phones to gym equipment, and you'll see they just rip off existing designs.
Ex Bitteeinbit/LexusSchmexus
User avatar
canucklhead
Expatriate
Posts: 1107
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2014 9:43 am
Reputation: 439
Cambodia

Re: China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by canucklhead »

Just say NO to Huawei 5G.
techietraveller84
Expatriate
Posts: 567
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2020 10:04 pm
Reputation: 167
United States of America

Re: China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by techietraveller84 »

Though I feel like I take a lot of security precautions with my online activity, I assume that whatever I put out there online will leave a permanent record to be exploited by anyone, anytime. The goal is to keep living a good life while appearing as uninteresting/useless to "them" as possible.
User avatar
SternAAlbifrons
Expatriate
Posts: 5752
Joined: Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:31 am
Reputation: 3424
Location: Gilligan's Island
Pitcairn Island

Re: China's mass surveillance of the world for secrets and scandal

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

hello hello... can you hear me.. shhhh... i'll whisper this cos i think they have bugged the phone
.... listen carefully


EVERY ONE FUCKING ARSEHOLE IN THE WORLD ARE LISTENING IN TO EVERYTHING YOU SAY BUY AND THINK. ESPECIALLY YOUR OWN GOVMENT AND BIGBIZ.
'HAVE BEEN FOR A WHILE, BUT NOW IT"S GONE TOTAL.
BUT YOU KNOW ALL THAT - I AM JUST WONDERING WHY YOU ARE SO HARD OF HEARING??
and why you value your privacy, and data, at zero

but shhh..
Post Reply Previous topicNext topic
  • Similar Topics
    Replies
    Views
    Last post

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Chuck Borris, Cooldude, Freightdog, John Bingham, KunKhmerSR, Random Dude, Spigzy and 801 guests