China Read E-mails of Top US Officials

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China's cyber spies have accessed the private e-mails of "many" top Obama Administration officials, apparently, and have been doing so since at least April 2010. The e-mail grab -- first codenamed "Dancing Panda" by US officials, and then "Legion Amethyst" -- was detected in April 2010, according to a top secret NSA briefing from 2014. The intrusion into personal e-mails was still active at the time of the briefing and, according to the senior official, is still going on.

In 2011, Google disclosed that the private gmail accounts of some US officials had been compromised, but the briefing shows that private e-mail accounts from other providers were compromised as well. The government e-mail accounts assigned to the officials, however, were not hacked because they are more secure, apparently. The private e-mails of "all top national security and trade officials" were targeted. The Chinese also harvested the email address books of targeted officials, according to the document, reconstructing and then "exploiting the(ir) social networks" by sending malware to their friends and colleagues. The time period overlaps with Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account while Secretary of State from Jan. 21, 2009 to Feb. 1, 2013. The names and ranks of the officials whose e-mails were actually grabbed, however, were not disclosed in the NSA briefing nor by the intelligence official.


China Read E-mails of Top US Officials