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China's spies for hire: hackers who blend espionage and entrepreneurship

Sponsored but not necessarily micromanaged by Beijing, this new breed of hacker attacks government targets and private companies alike.

Xi Jinping
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Xi Jinping transferred cyberhacking responsibility to a security ministry from the PLA following a slew of sloppy attacks and a reorganization of the military. (File Photo: Bloomberg)

Paul Mozur and Chris Buckley | NYT
China’s buzzy high-tech companies don’t usually recruit Cambodian speakers, so the job ads for three well-paid positions with those language skills stood out. The ad, seeking writers of research reports, was placed by an internet security start-up in China’s tropical island-province of Hainan.

That start-up was more than it seemed, according to American law enforcement. Hainan Xiandun Technology was part of a web of front companies controlled by China’s secretive state security ministry, according to a federal indictment from May. They hacked computers from the United States to Cambodia to Saudi Arabia, seeking sensitive government data as well as less-obvious