Story highlights
- The FBI over the past year has seen a 53% increase in economic espionage cases
- The FBI continues to see spear phishing attempts
Washington (CNN)The FBI has seen a sharp rise in economic espionage cases aimed at U.S. companies, with a vast majority of the perpetrators originating from China with ties to the nation's government, authorities said Thursday.
At a briefing at the FBI's Washington headquarters, the head of the agency's counterintelligence division, Randall Coleman, said the bureau has seen a 53% increase in economic espionage cases, or the theft of trade secrets leading to the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars, over the past year. He cited examples of large corporations successfully targeted in the past such as DuPont, Lockheed Martin and Valspar, who have since worked with the bureau to further safeguard their intellectual property.
To highlight this growing threat to the U.S. economy, the FBI has launched a nationwide campaign intended to warn industry leaders of the danger they face from foreign actors. But the FBI not only considers this a threat to American economic prosperity, but to its physical security as well.
"Economic security is national security," said Bill Evanina, the head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and one of the agents leading the charge in stemming the threat to corporations. Many of the tools used are the same as the ones used to track terrorists, he said.
In a survey conducted by the FBI, half of the 165 private companies that participated have claimed to be victims of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets, and 95% of those attempts originated from individuals associated with the Chinese government.
One of the most concerning means of obtaining sensitive industry secrets is through the use of "insider threats," or employees who are familiar with the inner workings of a particular technology being recruited by foreign agents in exchange for large amounts of cash.
"My company had first-hand experience dealing with an economic espionage case," Andy Ubel, the chief intellectual property counsel of Valspar, said in an FBI-produced video entitled "The Company Man: Protecting America's Secrets," which aims to "raise awareness of the growing economic espionage threat," the bureau says on its YouTube page.
"One of our key employees, a lab director, quit one day, and wouldn't tell us where he was going. And we only discovered later that he had downloaded a whole bunch of our data onto his own personal hard drive," Ubel said.
The FBI continues to see spear phishing attempts, when an email or link appears legitimate but is in fact a bogus message intended on tricking recipients into offering up personal information. Social media and sites like LinkedIn are also being utilized in economic espionage where potential recruits can be found and contacted based on relevant knowledge and work experience.
There have also been recent cases of trade secret theft which included dumpster diving for intellectual property such as discarded prototypes. In one case, the FBI says Chinese nationals were caught digging in corn fields in Iowa in search of seeds developed by a U.S. company to be pest and drought resistant. While the theft of corn seeds may appear innocuous, in reality the company that developed them spent tens of millions of dollars on research to perfect the technology.
"The Chinese government plays a significant role" in economic espionage, Evanina said. "The playing field is not level" when a single company faced with relentless targeting by individuals or entities who have the backing of a foreign government, he said.
The aim of economic espionage is to save a company the capital it would typically spend on research and development by just copying the processes of proven methods of production. In one example, spies were targeting the manufacturers of sprinkler heads hoping to gain an edge in their market by stealing manufacturing techniques to make the company more efficient. Cases of theft include technological advances in paint, Kevlar, and seeds and grain, as well as traditional targets such as military telecommunications.
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
How the Sony hack unfolded – Sony Pictures announce the controversial comedy "The Interview," a film depicting the assassination of North Korea's leader, will have a limited release on Christmas Day. The studio previously announced it would shelve plans to release the film after it became the victim of a cyber attack thought to have originated in North Korea. Click to see how the saga unfolded.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
In June 2014, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said "The Interview" was "the most undisguised terrorism." "If the U.S. administration connives at and patronizes the screening of the film, it will invite a strong and merciless countermeasure," he said.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
In November, "The Guardians of Peace," a hacker group with suspected ties to North Korea, said that it had hacked Sony Pictures and released massive amounts of data. The group added that there would be more leaks.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 5 -- Hackers exposed the security numbers of 47,423 people including Conan O'Brien, Sylvester Stallone, Rebel Wilson, Judd Apatow and Frank Stallone.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
In early December, hackers emailed Sony employees warning that "your family will be in danger." Guardians of Peace have claimed the email did not come from them. The FBI confirmed in a statement they were aware of the email and are investigating the "person or group responsible for the recent attack on the Sony Pictures network." Many security experts said the hack increasingly pointed to North Korea.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 7 -- North Korea's state-run propaganda arm said they were not responsible for the Sony hack attack but applauded it as "a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers with the DPRK." They added they could not be responsible as America is "a country far across the ocean."
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 8 -- Another message appeared on a website saying: "We have already given our clear demand to the management team of SONY, however, they have refused to accept. Do carry out our demand if you want to escape us. And, Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!"
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
Sony Hack Timeline – December 11 -- Another leaked email revealed a controversial exchange between a Sony executive and a producer, speculating over President Barack Obama's favorite films, referring to "Django Unchained" and other movies about African Americans such as "12 Years a Slave."
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![December 15 -- Sony Pictures asked news organizations to stop examining and publicizing the information made public by the hackers. Attorney David Boies said that the hackers' tactics are part of "an ongoing campaign explicitly seeking to prevent [Sony] from distributing a motion picture."](http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/141219153304-david-boies-horizontal-large-gallery.jpg)
Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 15 -- Sony Pictures asked news organizations to stop examining and publicizing the information made public by the hackers. Attorney David Boies said that the hackers' tactics are part of "an ongoing campaign explicitly seeking to prevent [Sony] from distributing a motion picture."
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 16 -- In an email to Sony Pictures' co-chair Amy Pascal, producer Scott Rudin called Angelina Jolie "minimally talented" and a "spoiled brat" with a "rampaging... ego". Jolie and Pascal were later photographed running into each other at an event with Jolie giving Pascal a nasty look. The leaks also revealed the secret aliases of some well-known actors such as Tom Hanks, Sara Michelle Gellar and Jessica Alba.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 16 -- The New York premiere of "The Interview" was canceled after "The Guardians of Peace" posted a threat against moviegoers. The message said: "We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places 'The Interview' be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to," the hacking group said. "The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001."
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 17 -- Two former Sony employees sued the company for failing to protect their private information. The plaintiffs seek to form a class action lawsuit of up to 15,000 former employees. The plaintiffs want Sony to provide them with five years of credit monitoring, bank monitoring, identity theft insurance and credit restoration services. They also called for Sony to be subject to regular privacy audits.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 18 -- Sony decided to cancel the release of "The Interview," a decision that sparked outrage among celebrities and politicians. A movie theater in Texas announced they would offer a free screening of Team America -- which features the leader's father Kim Jong Il -- instead until Paramount shut that down too. Sony also downplayed the possibility that the film could be released online.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 19 -- President Obama said in a news conference that Sony "made a mistake" in response to the studio's decision to cancel its plans to release "The Interview" on Christmas Day. He told CNN later that week that the Sony hack was an act of "cybervandalism", not "an act of war".
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
December 21 -- Sony Pictures' CEO Michael Lynton responds to President Obama's comments, telling CNN "we did not cave or back down." Mr Lynton also said Sony were looking into releasing "The Interview" on the internet but no major distributor has volunteered to release the film.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
How the Sony hack unfolded – December 22 -- North Korea's internet goes black for more than nine hours. The cause of the outage is unknown, but experts have suggested that a lone hacker could have carried it out, others even argued that the North Korean government could have deliberately disconnected themselves.
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Photos: How the Sony hack unfolded
How the Sony hack unfolded – December 23 -- Sony Pictures announced "The Interview" will be released on Christmas Day but only in a limited number of theatres. The studio's CEO Michael Lynton said: "while we hope this is only the first step of the film's release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech." So far more than 200 independently-owned theatres have agreed to show the film.
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While many companies may be unaware they are the targets of economic espionage, the FBI is constantly seeking "referrals," or reports of behavior consistent with the threat.
In one instance in 2010, what appeared to be a simple case of trespassing turned out to be two Chinese nationals acting on behalf of government entities who had broken into a facility late at night to take photos of the equipment after unsuccessful attempts at recruiting insiders who could provide them with vital information on the technology they were seeking. Once the FBI was made aware, a confidential source and employee of the company set up a meeting where they were arrested and eventually given lengthy jail sentences.