Chinese spies target UK exhibitors

Monday, February 01, 2010

The British secret service has accused China of ‘bugging and burgling’ UK exhibitors and businesses at international trade fairs in an bid to obtain sensitive commercial secrets.

A leaked document written, according to the Sunday Times, by MI5’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, claims undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security in China, approached UK businessmen at trade fairs and exhibitions with “gifts” and “lavish hospitality”.

These gifts, in the form of cameras and memory sticks, have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to user’s computers, according to The Sunday Times report.

With a large UK presence expected at Shanghai Expo this year the warning to British businessmen has a big exhibition resonance: “Hotel rooms in major Chinese cities,” the ST quotes from the report, “such as Beijing and Shanghai, which are frequented by foreigners, are likely to be bugged…hotel rooms have been searched while the occupants are out of the room”.

The hospitality, referred to in the report as a series of concerted “honeytraps”, are, in select cases, a bid to blackmail UK businesses into betraying sensitive commercial information.

Key targets for the subterfuge include business exhibitors in the energy, communications and manufacturing sectors.

The report says MI5 believes the Chinese government “represents one of the most significant espionage threats to the UK” because of its use of these methods, as well as widespread electronic hacking.

If you would like to comment on this story, or if you believe your business has been in any way compromised as a result of industrial espionage, please get in touch at arc@mashmedia.net