- China lures military and intelligence workers with ‘gig-work’ jobs
- The employees are enticed through interviews and written assessments
- China compiles separate reports for ‘comprehensive operational picture’
China is targeting Western military, intelligence and government employees with honeypot job offers to steal secrets and gather information about government policy, as well as military strategy, capabilities and installations.
You may already be familiar with North Korea’s attempts to sneak into Western tech companies through job applications, but China has changed the playbook to lure foreign policy and defense analyst job seekers.
The problem has become so serious that the FBI, along with the Five Eyes intelligence community, has issued an employment fraud alert to prevent the accidental sharing of classified and privileged information with China.
China lures agents to share secrets
The warning says Chinese intelligence agents pose as employees of private consultancies, think tanks or human resources firms that offer lucrative job offers through job ads posted on professional networking platforms, online recruitment and freelance “gig work” sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed and Upwork.
Once the decoy has attracted a potential target, an interview is scheduled where the target is probed for their connections to government contacts, or about their military roles and unit activities and information about their home base or naval vessel.
Candidates who pass the interview stage will then be invited to take part in a written assessment focused on analyzing China’s bilateral relations, geopolitical issues related to the Indo-Pacific region or on broader defense issues and international trade.
If the written assessment shows promise, the employers will try to probe the potential employee for more privileged information and will use the pretext of moving to a ‘secure’ encrypted messaging platform to build trust.
Once the relationship is established, the candidates will begin receiving payments for their reports, with the FBI noting that significantly higher payments will be made for sensitive information. The payments are often routed through third party payment platforms such as PayPal, Payoneer, Zelle, Skrill and Wise. The recruiters will also use Western Union, e-transfer and cryptocurrency transfers.
The Chinese intelligence agents’ strategy is not to examine sensitive information from a single source, which might arouse suspicion, but to use multiple reports from multiple candidates to piece together “a comprehensive operational picture.”
But it is not just military and intelligence personnel who are the targets of this scheme, as those with privileged access to public information also include academics, journalists, freelance writers, think tank employees or anyone with links to the defense, security, political and economic sectors.
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