Chinese and Russian hackers are looking for American spies

Foreign intelligence agencies, especially in China and Russia, are actively collecting and analyzing hacked US databases to identify US intelligence officers and agents, the Los Angeles Times reports.

These arrays of information include security checks, airline data, and health insurance forms.

Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper writes that as a result of these actions, at least one secret network of American engineers and scientists who provided technical support to American operatives and agents working undercover abroad was compromised.

Counterintelligence officers claim that their opponents combine these massive data files and then use complex programs to try to isolate disparate pickups that can be used to identify and track, and in the worst case, to blackmail and recruit American intelligence agents, the newspaper writes.

In an interview with the newspaper, one of the leaders of the American counterintelligence, William Evanina, said that the analysis of digital data can show "who is an intelligence officer, who goes where and when, who has financial or health problems."

“The result is a holistic picture,” he said.

Evanina expressed "absolute" confidence that opponents use this information against American agents.

Evanina refused to name the countries in question. But other US officials, on condition of anonymity, told the Los Angeles Times that China and Russia are collecting and studying secret American databases for counterintelligence purposes.

The United States is also engaged in active cyber espionage, the newspaper notes, but authorities in Moscow and Beijing often work in collaboration with criminal hackers and private companies to identify and extract secret data from American systems, instead of kidnapping them themselves. This makes it difficult to set clear targets for the US response.

Findings in the databases can reveal family, medical, and financial problems that foreign intelligence agencies can use in trying to lure out secret data from US officials, said Congressman Adam Schiff, a leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“This challenge fits well with the twenty-first century,” said Schiff. “The whole cyberlandschaft has changed.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, US intelligence officials have found evidence that the Department of State Security of China combines medical data stolen in January from Anthem, a large insurance company, passenger data of United Airlines, hacked in May, and data from security audits of the US federal personnel department.

When hacking into the Anthem database, which contained information about 80, millions of former and current customers and employees of the company, a malicious program was used that, according to statements by US officials, is associated with the Chinese government, the newspaper said. These data were not seen in online black markets, which suggests that they are under the control of a foreign government.