Professional platforms like LinkedIn, Upwork, and Indeed have become key tools in a large-scale and aggressive Chinese intelligence campaign. Beijing agents are using these platforms en masse under the guise of recruiters to target professionals with access to confidential information.
Professional platforms like LinkedIn, Upwork, and Indeed have become key tools in a large-scale and aggressive Chinese intelligence campaign. Beijing agents are using these platforms en masse under the guise of recruiters to target professionals with access to confidential information.
This is stated in a joint security bulletin entitled «Safeguarding Our Secrets», published by the counterintelligence agencies of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (the Five Eyes alliance), writes The Wall Street Journal.
The spies masquerade as representatives of non-existent consulting firms, think tanks, or recruitment agencies, supposedly based in Europe or other regions outside of China. They are specifically looking for foreign policy and defense specialists. They are particularly interested in individuals with state secrets clearances and security experts in the Indo-Pacific region.
The recruitment scheme works in stages. Initially, potential candidates are offered to take an online interview and write a «test report» on general topics for a fee of several hundred or thousand dollars. Payment is made through popular payment systems or cryptocurrency. Over time, tasks become more specific, and communication moves to secure messengers, where recruits are required to provide non-public and confidential data.
In the UK alone, the MI5 security service has recorded over 20,000 cases of Chinese agents attempting to contact British citizens via LinkedIn to obtain sensitive information.
LinkedIn responded to the intelligence agencies' warnings and noted that creating fake profiles is against the platform’s rules. «We are focused on detecting state-sponsored abuse and continue to combat fake accounts,» the social network said.
China has been using professional networks for recruitment for at least a decade. The most high-profile precedent was the case of former CIA officer Kevin Mallory, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2018 for passing classified information to China. Mallory contacted a Chinese recruiter on LinkedIn under the pretext of consulting work, after which he traveled to the PRC, where he received a special secure phone for communication.
Earlier, a 29-year-old Ukrainian man who helped North Korean IT specialists get jobs at 40 American companies was sentenced to 5 years in prison in the United States.
