After Seven Years of Hacking an Indictment - Will it Make a Difference?

Federal prosecutors indicted three Chinese nationals last week. It accusing them of hacking over the past seven years into at least three multinational corporations.

Taylor Armerding reported this is for nakedsecurity.sophos.com last week and was kind enough to ask my opinion for background.

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China warned it would retaliate if the US pressed the issue. And that was pretty much that.

Which is the way Kevin Murray, director at Murray Associates, a counter espionage consultancy, sees this case playing out. Does the indictment mean anything significant will happen? “No,” he said, offering a brief history lesson.

Go back 1,000 years, remembering that the Chinese invented things like silk, gunpowder, paper. All this intellectual property was stolen from them. At that time, the law in China was that if you engaged in it, that was your life. But it still got stolen. So now they’re getting back at us. And we’re trying to replicate what they did by punishing the criminal. Is it going to help? No.

Murray said if those responsible for protecting IP faced charges, “then you’d see some changes.” more