Chinese espionage on America's dams

Bill Gertz reports:

Xiafen “Sherry” Chen, an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) office in Ohio, was arrested in October and charged in a federal grand jury indictment with illegally accessing the Army’s National Inventory of Dams (NID).

The NID is a sensitive database containing information on all U.S. dams. U.S. intelligence officials have said the database was compromised by Chinese hackers in 2013 as part of covert efforts by Beijing to gather sensitive information on critical U.S. infrastructure for possible use in a future conflict.

Ms. Chen is charged with stealing sensitive data “involving critical national infrastructure” after accessing the Army Corps of Engineers dam inventory in May 2012 without authorization. She also is charged with lying to investigators.

A 59-year-old naturalized American, Ms. Chen has pleaded not guilty.

An FBI memorandum dated July 11, 2014, outlining a federal search of Ms. Chen’s email, reveals that the probe was part of an investigation of Chinese economic espionage.

The Washington Free Beacon disclosed on May 1, 2013, that U.S. intelligence agencies had traced a cyber intrusion into the Corps of Engineers dam database to the Chinese government. That hacking took place against the Corps of Engineer’s NID and involved an “unauthorized person” who conducted the intrusion in January 2013.

Adm. Mike Rogers, head of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, told Congress in November that key networks and control systems for financial, water, and other sectors have been penetrated by foreign states in preparation for future cyberattacks aimed at crippling critical infrastructure.

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