Industrial espionage, Part 5: People from many countries targeting U.S.

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: M. E. KABAY ON SECURITY
10/20/05
Today's focus: Industrial espionage, Part 5: People from many
countries targeting U.S.

Dear security.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Reports show long list of countries involved in industrial
espionage
* Links related to Security
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Industrial espionage, Part 5: People from many
countries targeting U.S.

By M. E. Kabay

So far in this series, I have reviewed methods of industrial
espionage and surveys about the dimensions of the problem. Today
I look at information about who is attacking us.

The information comes from the National Counterintelligence
Center (NACIC), which later became the Office of the National
Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX). As I mentioned in my
first article, these agencies have been reporting annually to
Congress since 1995 about foreign economic collection and
industrial espionage. Their reports are freely available as PDF
files <http://tinyurl.com/cu34l>.

Early reports from NACIC/ONCIX blanked out the names of
countries suspected or known to be engaging in foreign
industrial espionage against the U.S.; however, later editions
began publishing lists. The countries mentioned in early reports
were Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Cuba,
Georgia, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Libya, Moldova, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Taiwan, Turkmenistan,
Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

In the 2000 Annual Report, respondents to the NACIC survey of a
few (about a dozen) Fortune 500 companies reported that the top
countries involved in industrial espionage cases against their
firms were (in order of importance) China, Japan, Israel,
France, Korea, Taiwan, and India.

By 2002, the ONCIX Annual Report commented:

"The laundry list of countries seeking U.S. technologies in 2001
was long and diverse. Some 75 countries were involved in one or
more suspicious incidents. The most active countries in economic
espionage, according to DSS data, were an interesting mix of
rich and poor and 'friend' and foe. Many of the richest nations
aggressively sought the latest in advanced technologies both to
upgrade their already formidable military infrastructures -
particularly command, control, and communications - and to make
their already sophisticated industries even more competitive
with the United States. Most of the poorer countries, however,
continued to exhibit a preference for older 'off the shelf'
hardware and software to renovate their existing defensive
systems and to develop countermeasures to provide them
battlefield advantage. The search for lower technology goods by
these less developed countries probably reflected their desire
to bring in technologies that could be more easily integrated
into their existing military structures; a number of these
countries were probably not capable of utilizing the most
sophisticated U.S. technologies."

The 2003 ONCIX report stated, "Foreigners from almost 90
countries attempted to acquire sensitive technologies from the
United States in 2003, according to data compiled from across
the [counterintelligence community], about the same number as in
2002."

That report also explained:

"While foreign government officials were behind some of the
incidents, they by no means accounted for the majority of
collection attempts. For example, Defense Security Service (DSS)
data show that [bullets added]
* only about 15% of suspicious efforts to illegally acquire
sensitive U.S. military-related technology in 2003 directly
involved foreign governments.
* Another 25% came from government-affiliated organizations or
foreign companies that work solely or predominantly for foreign
governments, according to DSS statistics.
* The remainder came from individuals (14%) claiming to be
working for themselves and
* from company representatives (31%);
* in 15% of cases, there was no indication of affiliation."

According to the latest ONCIX report available (2004),
"Individuals from both the private and public sectors in almost
100 countries attempted to illegally acquire U.S. technologies
in FY2004, roughly the same number of countries as [in 2003]...."
However, the report indicates a possible growth in
government-sponsored industrial espionage: "foreign state actors
accounted for about one-fifth of suspicious incidents and
government-related organizations accounted for another 15%."
However, "Commercial organizations and private individuals with
no known affiliation to foreign governments together accounted
for nearly half - 36% and 12% respectively - of all suspicious
incidents. In another 16%, the contractors were unable to
determine the affiliation of the foreign parties involved in the
elicitation."

In summary, the enormous investment in U.S. intellectual
property has been a prime target for nations and firms eager to
find shortcuts in the research and development process and thus
to reduce their costs by stealing our information. In the next
couple of articles, I look at some specific cases to illustrate
the problem more vividly than by dry survey results.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Cisco finally brings security push to LAN
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsec9066nlsecuritynewsal9145>
2. Skype: Hazardous to network health?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsecuritynewsal7851>
3. WiMAX just around the corner
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsecuritynewsal9149>
4. McAfee, Omniquad top anti-spyware test
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsecuritynewsal6949>
5. Sourcefire discloses buffer-overflow vulnerability in Snort
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsecuritynewsal9229>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: M. E. Kabay

M. E. Kabay, Ph.D., CISSP, is Associate Professor in the
Division of Business and Management at Norwich University in
Northfield, Vt. Mich can be reached by e-mail
<mailto:mkabay@norwich.edu> and his Web site
<http://www2.norwich.edu/mkabay/index.htm>.

New information assurance journal - Norwich University Journal
of Information Assurance (NUJIA). See
<http://nujia.norwich.edu/>
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