From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Thu May 02 2013 - 01:52:04 CDT

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/china-cyberspies-outwit-u-s-stealing-military-secrets.html

By Michael Riley & Ben Elgin
Bloomberg.com
May 1, 2013

Among defense contractors, QinetiQ North America (QQ/) is known for
spy-world connections and an eye- popping product line. Its
contributions to national security include secret satellites, drones,
and software used by U.S. special forces in Afghanistan and the Middle
East.

Former CIA Director George Tenet was a director of the company from 2006
to 2008 and former Pentagon spy chief Stephen Cambone heads a major
division. Its U.K. parent was created as a spinoff of a government
weapons laboratory that inspired Q’s lab in Ian Fleming’s James Bond
thrillers, a connection QinetiQ (pronounced kin-EH-tic) still touts.

QinetiQ’s espionage expertise didn’t keep Chinese cyber- spies from
outwitting the company. In a three-year operation, hackers linked to
China’s military infiltrated QinetiQ’s computers and compromised most if
not all of the company’s research. At one point, they logged into the
company’s network by taking advantage of a security flaw identified
months earlier and never fixed.

“We found traces of the intruders in many of their divisions and across
most of their product lines,” said Christopher Day, until February a
senior vice president for Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)’s Terremark
security division, which was hired twice by QinetiQ to investigate the
break-ins. “There was virtually no place we looked where we didn’t find
them.”

[...]

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