Cybersecurity


Espionage and LinkedIn: How Not to Be Recruited As a Spy
The risk that hostile intelligence services will use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool has been widely reported. One such report, by Mika Aaltola at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs published in June 2019, focused on Chinese activity on LinkedIn. The phenomenon, however, is neither confined to Chinese intelligence operations nor limited to that particular social media platform. All intelligence agencies use similar exploits, as illustrated by the Iranian-linked hack of Deloitte in which a LinkedIn connection was used to gain an employee's trust. Even so, the number of reported cases attributed to the Chinese — including those of former intelligence officers such as Kevin Mallory and corporate espionage cases such as one involving an engineer at GE Aviation — suggest their intelligence services are among the most active and aggressive users of LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.

Statecraft

Spies fear a consulting firm helped hobble U.S. intelligence

America’s vast spying apparatus was built around a Cold War world of dead drops and double agents. Today, that world has fractured and migrated online, with hackers and rogue terrorist cells, leaving intelligence operatives scrambling to keep up.

So intelligence agencies did what countless other government offices have done — they brought in a consultant. For the last four years, the powerhouse firm McKinsey has helped restructure the country’s spying bureaucracy, aiming to improve response time and smooth out communication.

Instead, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials who either witnessed the restructuring first-hand or are familiar with the project, the multi-million dollar overhaul has left many within the country’s intelligence agencies demoralized and less effective.

These insiders say the efforts have hindered decision-making at key agencies — including the CIA, National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.