Cybersecurity & Espionage Articles
Software Engineer Gets Federal Prison For Stealing Fishing Spot Info From Escambia County Company6/25/2020 Original article at NorthEscambia.com
Timothy J. Smith, 43, of Mobile, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in United States District Court in Pensacola on charges of theft of trade secrets and interstate extortionate communications. Strikeline, the victim in the case, is a Pensacola based company that uses commercial side scan sonar equipment to locate fishing reefs in the Gulf of Mexico and sells the coordinates using an interactive map on their website. StrikeLines also provides public coordinates for free to those interested in finding valuable spots to fish in the Gulf. The evidence showed that between April and November 2018, Smith obtained private information valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars from the local company by using sophisticated cyber techniques in order to gain the trade secrets and decrypt information of the company from its website. After hearing how Smith stole private sonar coordinates of reefs, the jury received testimony and exhibits showing how Smith then tried to extort the two owners of StrikeLines for more valuable information. During this entire time, the victims did not know Smith’s identity or why he was trying to harm them. Federal and state law enforcement were able to trace all the criminal acts back to Smith in Mobile where he committed the cyber theft against the Pensacola company. At sentencing, United States District Judge M. Casey Rodgers announced that she thought Smith’s acts were based upon “spite” and “arrogance.” In addition to his term of imprisonment, Judge Rodgers sentenced Smith to a one-year term of supervision once released from custody. Smith was also ordered to forfeit all the electronic devices he utilized to commit his crimes. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office takes very seriously cyber crimes of all kinds, ranging from protecting our national security to the secrets of private companies,” said U.S. Attorney Lawrence Keefe. “In our increasingly online society, cyber security is vital to all of us as we conduct Internet transactions and conversations so that we can be confident our identities and personal information are protected. Our office is pleased that the jury held the defendant to account for victimizing a small local business.” “This is the first time we’ve investigated a case like this and it most likely won’t be the last,” said FDLE Pensacola Special Agent in Charge Jack Massey. “I applaud our FDLE agents and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for always working to stay at the forefront of technology and one step ahead of the bad guys.” This case resulted from an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the FBI, and the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant United States Attorney David L. Goldberg prosecuted the case.
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Original article at the Washington Examiner
Wray, who took over the FBI’s top spot in the wake of President Trump’s firing of James Comey, told Bret Baier of Special Report on Fox News that China is the greatest threat to the U.S. economy and its democratic principles, warning about the dangers posed by Chinese trade theft and espionage. “There’s no country that presents a broader, more comprehensive threat to America’s innovation, to our economic security, and to our democratic ideas than China does,” Wray said in an interview that aired Wednesday. "The FBI has over 2,000 active investigations that trace back to the government in China," Wray said, noting that they represent “about a 1300% increase in terms of economic espionage investigations with a Chinese nexus from about a decade ago.” Original article at Yahoo! News
“When this information was published, it was shared with all of our nation’s adversaries, creating a risk of exceptionally grave harm to the security of this country," said John C. Demers, an assistant Attorney General for national security. Original article at Task and Purpose
The Army appears to have inadvertently publicized potential plans for a brand-new hypersonic weapon system in a post on the official Flickr page of Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. |
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