Chicago Mercantile Exchange Secrets Leaked To China 121
chicksdaddy writes with this excerpt from Threat Post: "A 10 year employee of CME Group in Chicago is alleged to have stolen trade secrets and proprietary source code used to run trading systems for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and passed them to officials in China, where he hoped to set up a software firm to help create electronic exchanges, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Illinois. Chunlai Yang, 49, is alleged to have downloaded "thousands of files" containing "source code and proprietary algorithms" used by CME to run its trading systems. The files were downloaded from a company-owned source code repository maintained by CME to Yang's work computer, then copied them to removable "thumb" drives. The complaint also cites personal e-mail correspondence between Yang and an official in China that contained proprietary CME information."
Re:BTW, The Suspect is a US Citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
During the Cold War, many Soviet illegal agents (ie, lacking diplomatic cover; not "illegal immigrants") became naturalized US citizens. It is easier for a US citizen to get close to sensitive data, so its par for the course. If the KGB did it, you can bet the MSS is doing it, too. That's not to say he's a plant of the PRC, but I wouldn't be surprised at all. Just saying.
Thousand Grains of Sand (Score:5, Interesting)
The Chinese Government has a policy known as the 'Thousand Grains of Sand' where each citizen is encouraged to bring back a little something from overseas if they can. Then one of the hundreds of thousands of state officials implementing this policy will see what the person brought back and dole out any appropriate reward. This is why Chinese citizens (and some Chinese descended citizens who return to the motherland) are being caught all over the World doing this sort of stuff (eg. in New Zealand Chinese regularly get caught stealing agricultural samples that our higher-value export industries are based on). While anyone can be a criminal, I can't think of any other country in the modern age where this is officially sanctioned.
China wants to be number one in the World, and perhaps they will get there, but it seems an awful shame they're so determined to do so that they are quite unethical (from the majority of the rest of the World's point of view). This is not meant to be a bashing of China, or of Chinese citizens, just an explanation of why these events are becoming more frequent for those unaware of the official Chinese Government policy that encourages behavour considered criminal elsewhere. The Chinese Government will smile at you while robbing your house behind your back (although this is nothing compared to how they treat their own citizens).
Re:Thousand Grains of Sand (Score:2, Interesting)
New Zealand Chinese regularly get caught stealing agricultural samples that our higher-value export industries are based on
None other than founding father Thomas Jefferson engaged in this sort of agricultural espionage (smuggling two bags or unhulled rice out of Italy, a crime punishable by death at the time), so its hardly new or damning to the Chinese.
Re:McCarthy-style (Score:2, Interesting)
But with hindsight McCarthy seems to have _under_estimated the USSR's penetration of the US government. He may have been crazy, but it would seem that he wasn't paranoid enough.