US accuses China of 'super aggressive' spy campaign on LinkedIn
Tehran (KNA) - The United States has accused Chinese intelligence agencies of using fake LinkedIn accounts in a bid to recruit US citizens who have access to government and commercial secrets.
In an exclusive interview with Reuters, William Evanina, the US counter-intelligence chief, said that intelligence and law enforcement officials had informed LinkedIn of China's "super aggressive" efforts on the site.
Evanina alleged that the Asian country's espionage agencies contact thousands of LinkedIn members at a time, but declined to give further details like how many Americans may have been contacted.
Previously, German and British authorities had told their citizens that Beijing was allegedly using LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft Corp., in order to recruit them as spies. But this is the first time a US official has made such an allegation, saying it is a bigger problem now than before.
Evanina urged LinkedIn to look at copying the response of Twitter, Google and Facebook, which have all purged fake accounts.
"I recently saw that Twitter is cancelling, I don't know, millions of fake accounts, and our request would be maybe LinkedIn could go ahead and be part of that," said Evanina, who heads the US National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center.
Source: PressTV