China, Russia, Iran pose grave cyber espionage threat to US: Report

The US has identified China, Russia and Iran as "aggressive" and "capable" collectors of its sensitive economic information, trade secrets and technologies, particularly in cyberspace.The National Counterintelligence and Security Centerin its annual report 'Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyber' released yesterday said countries with closer ties to the US have also conducted cyber espionage to obtain US technology."Despite advances in cybersecurity, cyber espionage continues to offer threat actors a relatively low-cost, high-yield avenue of approach to a wide spectrum of intellectual property, it said."We anticipate that China, Russia, and Iran will remain aggressive and capable collectors of sensitive US economic information and technologies, particularly in cyberspace. All will almost certainly continue to deploy significant resources and a wide array of tactics to acquire intellectual property and proprietary information, said the report.China, according to the report, has expansive efforts in place to acquire US technology to include sensitive trade secrets and proprietary information.It continues to use cyber espionage to support its strategic development goalsscience and technology advancement, military modernisation, and economic policy objectives, the report said."China's cyberspace operations are part of a complex, multipronged technology development strategy that uses licit and illicit methods to achieve its goals, it said, noting that Chinese companies and individuals often acquire US technology for commercial and scientific purposes.At the same time, the Chinese government seeks to enhance its collection of US technology by enlisting the support of a broad range of actors spread throughout its government and industrial base, it said.The report running into more than 15 pages said that while next generation technologies will introduce a range of qualitative advances in data storage, analytics, and computational capacity, they also present potential vulnerabilities for which the cybersecurity community remains largely unprepared.The solidification of cloud computing over the past decade as a global information industry standard, coupled with the deployment of technologies such as artificial intelligence and internet if things, will introduce unforeseen vulnerabilities to US networks, it said.Noting that cloud networks and Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure are rapidly expanding the global online operational space, the report said threat actors have already demonstrated how cloud can be used as a platform for cyber exploitation."As IoT and AI applications expand to empower everything from 'smart homes' to 'smart cities' billions of potentially unsecured network nodes will create an incalculably larger exploitation space for cyber threat actors, it said.Building an effective response demands understanding economic espionage as a worldwide, multi-vector threat to the integrity of both the US economy and global trade.Of the view that China will continue to be a threat to US proprietary technology and intellectual property through cyber-enabled means or other methods, the report warned that if this threat is not addressed, it could erode America's long-term competitive economic advantage.An aggressive and capable collector of sensitive US technologies, Russia uses cyberspace as one of many methods for obtaining the necessary know-how and technology to grow and modernise its economy, it said.Russia uses cyber operations as an instrument of intelligence collection to inform its decision making and benefit its economic interests, it added.We believe that Iran will continue working to penetrate US networks for economic or industrial espionage purposes, it said adding that Iran's economystill driven heavily by petroleum revenuewill depend on growth in nonoil industries.We expect Iran will continue to exploit cyberspace to gain advantages in these industries. Iran will remain committed to using its cyber capabilities to attain key economic goals, primarily by continuing to steal intellectual property, in an effort to narrow the science and technology gap between Iran and Western countries, the report said.Further new and enhanced cyber, national security, and import laws in effect in foreign countries are posing an increasing risk to US technology and propriety information, it said.For example, in 2017, China and Russia aggressively enforced laws that bolstered their domestic companies at the expense of US companies and also might allow their companies access to US intellectual property and proprietary information, it added.

China, Russia, Iran pose grave cyber espionage threat to US: Report

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